4/14/2020 Bobbi Hardy
Engineering IT teams are redirecting resources to aid computational researchers and their work through the HTC system.
Written by Bobbi Hardy
The Grainger College of Engineering computer labs and computer testing facilities have been closed since Illinois’ shelter-in-place order was enacted in March. Engineering IT teams responded by repurposing computer resources from the empty labs to increase the functionality of the High Throughput Computing (HTC) system.
This redirection of resources will allow the HTC system to take advantage of unused resources from the Engineering WorkStation (EWS) labs, and eventually the Computer-Based Testing Facility (CBTF), to increase the resources available to computational researchers.
Engineering IT announced this addition to Grainger Engineering researchers on April 9; and within the first 24-hours saw 18 new requests from units across the college, including Mechanical Science and Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and the Information Trust Institute.
Several of the projects are related to the COVID-19 pandemic and include research by Diwakar Shukla, a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professor, and Balaji Panneerselvam, a post-doctoral fellow in Shukla’s group. Their research explores the mutations in the sequence of human ACE2 receptor that could enhance its binding with the S spike protein of SARS coronavirus 2. The goal is to design protein mimics that could be used as potential anti-COVID drugs.
Since 2018, the HTC system has collaborated with Engineering IT Shared Services, NCSA, and Research IT; initially taking advantage of retired campus cluster nodes. These currently, unused resources from the EWS lab systems have added an additional 800 cores and 3,200GB of RAM to the existing campus HTC system, bringing the total cores available to 4,400 and 10.5TB of available RAM.
Work will continue to add CBTF resources over the coming weeks. This configuration will also allow the system to utilize idle resources during other reduced lab use times such as evenings, between users, during campus holidays, and semester breaks.
For more information about the HTC system, visit go.illinois.edu/htc and submit questions to the HTC group: htc@lists.illinois.edu.