A new Linux cluster has taken up residence in the Research Data Center. This spring, BlueHive 2 will replace the original BlueHive – the University of Rochester’s first high performance computing system – and become the primary system running demanding computations for more than 650 researchers across the University.

“The new BlueHive will provide computing and storage infrastructure to enable more research through the Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation and other sponsored research projects,” said Brendan Mort, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC).

BlueHive 2 contains about 200 nodes and more than 4,000 memory-dense cores, which will provide faster computing with more power efficiency than the current BlueHive. The new cluster also uses water cooling technology, which is more efficient than air cooling, taking advantage of investments made in water cooling infrastructure for the Blue Gene/Q supercomputer that was acquired in June 2012.

With the cluster’s 1.5 petabytes of storage, researchers will be able to transfer large data sets more quickly between institutions – with collaborators at other universities, for example – over the University’s high-speed Internet2 connection.

“BlueHive 2 will also provide the technological foundation for the newly announced data science initiatives,” Mort said. These initiatives, part of the University’s $100 million commitment to data science, include the creation of an Institute for Data Science, a new building on the Science and Engineering Quadrangle to house it, and up to 20 new faculty members.

According to CIRC staff, they will begin migrating users over from the original BlueHive to the new cluster this spring and complete the transition by June.