Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center

The Center was first planned in early 2009 in joint discussions between MIT and UMass, with UMass President Jack M. Wilson being a key proponent of the project, and its eventual founding chair. Boston University, Northeastern, and Harvard joined the planning process soon thereafter. Holyoke was selected as the location on June 11, 2009. The specific site was announced on August 9, 2010; a century ago the site had housed a textile mill.[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/9/mass-schools-team-up-for-supercomputer-center/ "Mass. schools team up for supercomputer center"], Washington Times, October 9, 2011 Ground was broken on October 5, 2011. The topping off ceremony occurred on November 29, 2011.[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/11/30/supercomputer-structure-beam-placed/ SuperComputer Center 'Topped Off'], Harvard Crimson, November 30, 2011 The facility was completed in November 2012.{{Cite web|url = http://www.mghpcc.org/about/|title = ABOUT {{!}} MGHPCC|website = www.mghpcc.org|access-date = 2016-12-31}}

Funding for the construction of the facility came first and foremost from the five university partners.{{Cite web|url = http://www.mghpcc.org/about/partners/|title = Partners {{!}} MGHPCC|website = www.mghpcc.org|access-date = 2016-12-31}} The state of Massachusetts pledged $25 million toward associated costs.[http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2010/03/29/daily10-Mass-pledges-25M-for-Holyoke-computing-center.html "Mass. pledges $25M for Holyoke computing center"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100403023951/http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2010/03/29/daily10-Mass-pledges-25M-for-Holyoke-computing-center.html |date=2010-04-03 }}, Mass High Tech, March 29, 2010 Additional support came from Cisco Systems, and EMC Corporation. The U.S. Department of Commerce spent $2.1 million on hydroelectric infrastructure improvements to support the center and similar businesses in the city's Innovation District.[http://www.eda.gov/NewsEvents/PressReleases/20110824MAHolyoke Department of Commerce press release] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111115222049/http://www.eda.gov/NewsEvents/PressReleases/20110824MAHolyoke |date=2011-11-15 }}, August 24, 2011

File:USA Holyoke location map municipal fiber network.svg in Chicopee, connecting Holyoke's extensive city fiber network, seen here, to a regional fiber optic communications pathway]]

Holyoke Gas and Electric partnered with the consortium to do the site selection and to contract for the provision of green power from their hydroelectric facilities. Between 2011-2013, Holyoke Gas and Electric constructed the new North Canal Substation located on Water Street which provides the electrical service for the computer center via two dedicated 34.5 kV feeders directly from the substation's 34.5 kV bus. The MGHPCC shares the 34.5 kV bus exclusively with the Hadley Falls Hydro Electric station, the largest of HG&E's hydro facilities, which creates a direct power path to the computing center from the Hadley Falls plant. Two 115 kV/34.5 kV transformers at the substation connect the bus to the transmission system and provide electricity from the grid to the computing center when the hydro plant is offline or generating less power than the computing center is using. These transformers also function to deliver excess power to the grid when the Hadley Falls station is producing more output than what the computing center is using.

Holyoke's municipal fiber optic network would also play a decisive role in the location of the computing center, and with its construction, a dedicated link 10 gbps was built for the facility's educational affiliates on specialized networks such as the Internet2 consortium.{{cite web|title=Why Holyoke?|publisher=MGHPCC|archive-date=February 16, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180216075732/https://www.mghpcc.org/about/faqs/why-holyoke/|url=https://www.mghpcc.org/about/faqs/why-holyoke/}}

The MGHPCC facilities have been used for a wide variety of applications including,{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181030014137/http://www.mghpcc.org/research/publications/|url=http://www.mghpcc.org/research/publications/|archive-date=October 30, 2018|title=A selection of research using the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center|publisher=MGHPCC}} but not limited to, advanced iterative methods for modeling molecular geometry,{{cite journal|last1=Styers|last2=Gamache|first1=John M.|first2=Robert|title=Explicit Parallelization of Robert-Bonamy Formalism|journal=13th International HITRAN Conference|location=Cambridge, Mass.|doi=10.5281/zenodo.11186|year=2014|pages=39|bibcode=2014hitr.confE..39S}}{{cite journal|last1=Bores|last2=Auerbach|last3=Monson|first1=Cecilia|first2=Scott M.|first3=Peter A|title=Enhanced replica exchange reactive Monte Carlo simulations for constructing zeolite frameworks|journal=Molecular Simulation|year=2018|volume=XLIV|issue=6|pages=453–462|doi=10.1080/08927022.2017.1399375|s2cid=103190532 }} the behavior of stellar wind,{{cite journal|last1=Offner|last2=Liu|title=Turbulent Action at a Distance due to Stellar Feedback in Magnetized Clouds|journal=Nature Astronomy|year=2018|volume=2|issue=11|pages=896–900|doi=10.1038/s41550-018-0566-1|arxiv=1809.03513|bibcode=2018NatAs...2..896O|s2cid=256708172 }} ecological resilience of renewable energy systems,{{cite journal|title=Multidimensional stress test for hydropower investments facing climate, geophysical and financial uncertainty|last1=Ray|last2=Bonzanigo|last3=Wi|last4=Yang|last5=Karki|last6=Garcia|last7=Rodriguez|last8=Brown|first1=Patrick A|first2=Laura|first3=Sungwook|first4=Yi-Chen E|first5=Pravin|first6=Luis E|first7=Diego J|first8=Casey M|doi=10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.11.013|journal=Global Environmental Change|volume=XLVIII|date=January 2018|pages=168–181|hdl=10986/29445|hdl-access=free}} and neural circuitry.{{cite journal|journal=Neuron|last1=Mathis|last2=Rokni|last3=Kapoor|last4=Bethge|last5=Murthy|first1=Alexander|first2=Dan|first3=Vikrant|first4=Matthias|first5=Venkatesh N|title=Reading Out Olfactory Receptors: Feedforward Circuits Detect Odors in Mixtures without Demixing|volume=XCI|issue=5|date=September 7, 2016|pages=1110–1123|doi=10.1016/j.neuron.2016.08.007|pmid=27593177|pmc=5035545}} The facility also serves as a data processing center for a commercial and academic partnership hosted by Boston University known as Mass Open Cloud, a collaborative project to create a novel decentralized public cloud based on the Open Cloud eXchange model.{{cite web|url=https://massopen.cloud/about/|title=About|website=Mass Open Cloud|access-date=October 30, 2018}}{{cite news|title=Kids across the world likely don't know Red Hat, but it's working for them|last=Gronberg|first=Ray|url=https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article213594974.html|date=June 21, 2018|work=The News&Observer|location=Raleigh|archive-date=June 22, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180622063421/https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article213594974.html}}

On October 24th 2024, MGHPCC announced a $16 million expansion to its computing campus, planning to build a quantum computing complex. The project is being built with its Boston-based partner, QuEra Computing.https://www.masslive.com/westernmass/2024/10/another-revolution-about-to-start-with-16m-quantum-computing-project-in-mass.html

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{{Reflist}}

• {{cite journal|journal=IEEE Internet Computing|volume=XXI|issue=4|title=Design and Operational Analysis of a Green Data Center|date=27 July 2017|last1=Sharma|last2=Pegus|last3=Irwin|last4=Shenoy|last5=Goodhue|last6=Culbert|first1=Prateek|first2=Patrick|first3=David|first4=Prashant|first5=John|first6=James|pages=16–24|doi=10.1109/MIC.2017.2911421|s2cid=9604908 }}

:* [http://www.mghpcc.org/ MGHPCC Official Website], public information

:* [https://www.bu.edu/tech/support/research/computing-resources/scc/ Shared Computing Cluster], Boston University

:* [https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/ Research Computing], Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

:* [https://researchcomputing.mit.edu/facilities/mghpcc Research Computing Facility], Massachusetts Institute of Technology

:* [https://its.northeastern.edu/services/research-computing/ Research Computing], Northeastern University Information Technology Services

:* [https://its.uri.edu/research-computing/uri-mghpcc/ Research Computing], University of Rhode Island

:* [http://mghpcc.umass.edu/ High Performance Computing Center], UMass Amherst

:* [http://wiki.umassrc.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Green High Performance Computing Cluster], UMass Medical

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