Stony Brook University’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), in partnership with the University at Buffalo, has received a $13.77 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to enhance national research computing infrastructure.
The grant, titled “Sustainable Cyber-infrastructure for Expanding Participation,” will fund the acquisition and operation of a high-performance, energy-efficient supercomputer. This system is designed to meet increasing demands from artificial intelligence research and other scientific fields that require significant memory and computational resources. The initiative aims to broaden access to advanced computing tools for researchers, students, and educators nationwide.
The planned supercomputer will incorporate AmpereOne M Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Machine processors, known for their efficiency in AI inference and handling diverse academic workloads. It will also feature Qualcomm Cloud AI inference accelerators to improve energy efficiency and enable use of large-scale AI models. These technologies have been widely used in commercial cloud computing but are being deployed in academia for the first time through this project.
By combining these hardware solutions, the new system is expected to support the mission of the NSF-led National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR). The IACS-led computer will offer competitive performance while remaining accessible even to users without specialized programming skills or knowledge of advanced hardware.
“This project employs a comprehensive, multilayered strategy, with regional and national elements to ensure the widest possible benefits,” said IACS director Robert J. Harrison. “The team will collaborate with multiple initiatives and projects, to reach a broad audience that spans all experience levels from high school students beginning to explore science and technology to faculty members advancing innovation through scholarship and teaching.”
Nikolay Simakov, co-principal investigator and computational scientist at the University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research, commented on the collaboration: “The University at Buffalo is excited to partner with Stony Brook on this new project that will advance research, innovation and education by expanding the nation’s cyber-infrastructure to scientific disciplines that were not high performance computing-heavy prior to the AI boom, as well as expanding to non-R1 universities, which also didn’t have much of high-performance computing usage in the past.”
The funding is intended to support projects across various disciplines nationally and regionally. Emphasis will be placed on areas not typically targeted by other national resources—such as life sciences and computational linguistics—as well as on supporting high-throughput workloads like genomics research, bioinformatics analysis, AI/ML inference tasks, and statistical analysis. To maximize effectiveness for domain scientists using Ampere hardware, software applications relevant to these fields will be optimized accordingly.
According to NSF review criteria based on intellectual merit and broader impacts, this award aligns with its statutory mission.
