High Performance Research Computing Facility

The HPRCF at the Bates Laboratory consists of 71 water-cooled racks, each of which can supply up to 12 kW of power and cooling, and a high-speed 10 Gb/s network link to campus.  The construction, racks and network link represent an investment by MIT of about $7.0M.

The CERN CMS experiment is assigned 32 of the racks for a Tier 2 computing site; currently 24 are in use (one rack houses computers bought with non-CMS funds), with more computers being purchased on a planned schedule over the next several years.  Another 19 racks were used by MIT researchers on the LIGO gravitational wave experiment. Currently LIGO is using 5 racks with more powerful computers populating the racks. A number of the LIGO unused racks have been taken over by the MIT Physics Department and were used for a temporary computing cluster for Physics Department researchers.  Several racks are in use by other projects associated with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science.  Finally, 11 racks are being used for climate modeling by members of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, with additional EAPS racks to be populated in the next year. There are currently a number of racks available for other MIT users.

For more information please email Jim Kelsey or Judy Fabrizio or call 617-253-9200.

The facility is operated as an MIT service center.  Bates personnel are involved in on-going maintenance and support of the HPRCF.