Supercomputers for Oregon State University

Microway has provided Oregon State University with six NVIDIA® DGX-2™ supercomputer systems, deployment services, and bringup expertise. Each DGX-2 packs 16 fully connected Tesla® V100 GPUs, giving Oregon State a linked network of the world’s most powerful AI systems powered by 96 GPU accelerators. The new, massively increased computing capabilities at the College of Engineering resolved a significant campus hardware gap and helped support cutting-edge research on medical imaging, nuclear science, bridge construction, robotics, and driverless vehicles.

When planning expanded capability, university faculty and administrators determined they needed enough GPU capacity to serve the diverse needs of undergraduate classes and research workloads, plus lightning-fast storage. The University selected the NVIDIA DGX-2™ platform for its immense power, technical support services, and the Docker images with NVIDIA’s NGC containerized software. Each DGX-2 system delivers an unparalleled 2 petaFLOPS of AI performance.

While Oregon State had preexisting GPU capabilities before the upgrade, it lacked both compute power and an effective way to harness it. With the new computational engines and new Mellanox InfiniBand fabric implementation, the University could deploy a battery of computational muscle that worked as a cohesive unit.

Microway, Inc., an NVIDIA Partner Network HPC Partner of the Year, installed the DGX-2 deployment at Oregon State. Working with campus experts in the University’s IT organization, Microway experts completed the installation process, burned the new deployment in, integrated software, and transferred knowledge to the University team.

Since the successful installation the deployment has been utilized for a wide variety of research applications and as a classroom tool. These include research applications that were simply impossible to run on prior hardware: including a new driverless electric vehicle research.

Oregon State’s bold decision to invest in six new supercomputers was designed to improve its research and educational community. “We want to attract the very best to our campus, whether student, staff, or faculty, and we think the DGX-2 is going to go a long way to show how serious we are about that,” explains Todd Shechter, Director of Information Technology at Oregon State University College of Engineering. “Microway’s expert knowledge of the DGX-2 system and ability to train Oregon State IT professionals to operate the supercomputers play a key role in ensuring Oregon State’s future success in research endeavors and undergraduate education.”

“I hope there are additional opportunities to work with Microway,” says Shechter. “When you use the term value-added reseller, they truly do add value to the relationship.”