The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, a joint project of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, has received a $10-million grant from the National Science Foundation to build Bridges-3, the center’s next flagship supercomputer.
Bridges-3 will offer an array of different types of computational nodes that allow users to leverage cutting-edge technologies in complex projects that require seamless integration of different types of computation. Graphics processing units (GPUs), needed for demanding AI training jobs and accelerated simulation, and computation-intensive central processing units (CPUs) will be paired with large memory via an InfiniBand network to ensure computational tasks can move efficiently between the nodes best suited to each step of calculation.
“The system design reflects the practices successfully established through the Bridges family: selecting technologies that support a wide range of scientific disciplines, enabling flexible workflows, and ensuring that users at varying levels of experience can make productive use of the system,” said Bruno Abreu, PSC’s deputy scientific director and principal investigator for Bridges-3. “It maintains all the capabilities of its predecessor while offering state-of-the-art GPUs and CPUs that deliver substantial performance improvements for modeling, simulation, data analytics, and artificial intelligence.”
According to a news release, Bridges-3 will continue PSC’s 40-year history of supporting broad segments of the U.S. research and education community, including institutions without local HPC resources, emerging research programs, classroom use cases, and users new to advanced cyberinfrastructure.
“Our continued support of the national research community is at the heart of everything we do at PSC,” said Barr von Oehsen, PSC’s executive director. “With Bridges-3, we’re not just upgrading hardware, we’re renewing our promise to serve the researchers, educators, and students across the country who depend on open, accessible, high-performance computing to advance their work.”
Construction of Bridges-3 by Hewlett Packard Enterprise is expected to begin at PSC’s new data center in early 2027, with full operations expected in the summer.