Chiara Mingarelli, assistant professor of physics, brought her team to visit their high performance computing nodes on West Campus. The undergraduate students were especially delighted by the outing.
The high performance computing (HPC) nodes were purchased through Yale University research funds, and are currently producing new and exciting results in the search for gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes. HPC skills are essential in today’s research landscape, particularly in fields like astrophysics, where the analysis of vast amounts of data is critical. Their work involves processing enormous datasets, requiring not only computational efficiency but also a deep understanding of parallel processing, algorithm optimization, and data management. These skills are not only invaluable in academic research but also highly sought after in industry, where big data and HPC are driving innovation across sectors from finance to biotechnology. By mastering HPC, my students are not just contributing to our understanding of the universe but also preparing themselves for a wide range of impactful careers.
Ellis Eisenberg, YC’2027, commented, “Seeing where all of our computations are being done was a great experience. It really helped to solidify what happens when we run our simulations, and made me appreciate how advanced modern large-scale computing is.”
Another student, Bjorn Larsen, graduate student working with Chiara, added, “I thought it was a fun visit! One of the sysadmins, Jay Kubeck, showed us around and shared details about the different clusters, the process of installing new hardware, and the fancy cooling systems they have in place. You’d be surprised how loud it is by the GPU nodes from the fans alone (we measured over 90 dB)! It was really cool to literally walk around between all of the different computing clusters.
The server rooms are massive, spanning across two floors, and contain a huge amount of hardware to maintain. As someone who is liable to break any kind of hardware or electronics I interact with, I was very impressed and appreciative of the hard work Jay and the crew put in to maintain and upgrade these resources we use on a daily basis. They are an important part of our team! I would definitely recommend any others who are interested to schedule a visit to the site.”
Please see below for more photos from the visit.