Insights for HPC teams.

June 20, 2025

A guide to building HPC/AI systems in 2025

Kyle Sheumaker’s keynote on hardware, GPUs, interconnects, storage, power and cooling for HPC and AI systems at smaller institutions.

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January 16, 2023

NSF changes MRI full proposal deadlines for 2023 and beyond

The NSF moved its Major Research Instrumentation full proposal deadlines. What changed and what it means for your timeline.

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August 12, 2022

A conversation with our summer intern

An aerospace engineering student spent a summer with our engineers learning Linux and parallel computing. Here’s what he found.

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April 25, 2022

Download the new and updated grant writing white paper

The sixth edition of our white paper on HPC grant proposal writing, with sample proposals, checklists, eligibility and cost-sharing guidance, and more.

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January 8, 2020

HPC system design for liberal arts colleges

Kyle Sheumaker’s talk at Swarthmore College on cluster and processor architecture options for liberal arts colleges.

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August 5, 2019

What we learned analyzing a year of HPC RFPs

What a year of HPC RFPs taught us, including how long the process really takes, presented at PEARC19.

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January 3, 2019

HPC provides economic return on investment, study finds

An IDC study found that HPC investments pay off in revenue, profit and scientific innovation, useful evidence for any funding case.

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October 15, 2018

NSF awards nearly $16 million in MRI grants for HPC in 2018

A record year for NSF Major Research Instrumentation grants for HPC, and why getting the funding is only half the battle.

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March 20, 2018

Writing an RFP for HPC equipment purchases

Our white paper on writing a request for proposal for HPC equipment, based on interviews with customers who have done it.

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January 4, 2018

High performance computing trivia challenge

Five questions on supercomputing history. How many can you answer?

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October 29, 2016

How strong is your grant proposal for HPC funding?

Competition for NSF MRI funding is tough: roughly 1 in 4 proposals succeed. Our white paper shares what winning HPC proposals have in common.

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January 18, 2016

Five tips for writing a winning grant proposal

Advice from customers who have won NSF funding: cast a vision, paint the big picture, name your cluster and more.

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July 28, 2015

The cost of HPC: how does budget affect value?

What do you actually get for your money when you buy an HPC cluster, and how does value change as the budget grows?

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March 31, 2014

SSD vs. HDD: when to choose one over the other

Solid state or spinning disk? The strengths and weaknesses of each, and where each fits in an HPC cluster.

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March 13, 2014

HPC in the cloud: the case for and against

The arguments for and against running HPC workloads in the cloud instead of on your own cluster.

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February 20, 2014

Cluster interconnects: the three basic configurations

Gigabit Ethernet, 10GbE or InfiniBand? How to choose the right interconnect for your cluster’s workloads and budget.

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February 6, 2014

Oversubscribing your InfiniBand network?

For InfiniBand clusters past 36 nodes, whether to oversubscribe the network is a key design decision. The trade-offs explained.

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January 24, 2014

Powering your cluster

Receptacles, voltage, three-phase power and UPS: the power questions to answer before your cluster arrives.

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