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Delta

Project Profile

An image of Delta cabinets in the NPCF machine room.

The Next Big Wave.

Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Innovative High-Performance Computing Program and building on the success of Blue Waters, Delta is the most performant GPU computing resource in NSF’s portfolio, making it a prime destination for advanced scientific research.

More Than CPUs.

NCSA continues its contributions to supercomputing innovation with Delta, a computing and data resource that balances cutting-edge graphics processor and CPU architectures that will shape the future of advanced research computing.NCSA integrates Delta into the national cyberinfrastructure ecosystem through the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program and partners with the Science Gateways Community Institute to provide platform access serving a broad range of needs.

ACCESSIBLE BY DESIGN

The Delta team strives to create greater accessibility in all aspects of Delta’s operation, by:

  • Working with developers to create an HPC environment accessible by individuals with disabilities, 
  • Installing user-friendly interface applications like Open OnDemand, and
  • Evaluating individual components for more accessible options.

NCSA seeks to spread these advances throughout the broader research computing and data ecosystem, and is working to create best practices for accessibility in HPC.

DELTA MIGHT BE RIGHT FOR YOU IF:

  • you need access to advanced NVIDIA GPUs for your accelerated code
  • you’re interested in transitioning from CPU to GPU while running a CPU workload
  • you have large memory demands for a shared-memory application such as in-memory databases, etc.
  • you’re applying AI/ML methods in your research and need the compute to make it happen

The Delta team works to incorporate emerging research areas, like digital agriculture and computational archaeology, at the ground level, helping them take advantage of new computing methods in this nascent stage of their curriculums to create a foundation for greater cyberinfrastructure integration in their research from the start. 

Delta provides ample professional development opportunities to adapt research applications to more optimally use its key features. Researchers who currently have GPU projects or are considering migrating to GPU architectures will find ready assistance in migrating the work to Delta.

To apply for a Delta allocation, please visit the Delta allocations page.

Delta Offers:

  • 124 CPU nodes consisting of:
    – Dual AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processors
    – 256 GB DDR4-3200 RAM
    – 800 GB NVMe solid-state disk
  • 100 quad A100 GPU nodes consisting of:
    – Single AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processor
    – 256 GB DDR4-3200 RAM
    – 1.6 TB NVMe solid-state disk
    – Four NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 40 GB HBM2 RAM and NVLink
  • 100 quad A40 GPU nodes consisting of:
    – Single AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processor
    – 256 GB DDR4-3200 RAM
    – 1.6 TB NVMe solid-state disk
    – Four NVIDIA A40 GPUs with 48 GB GDDR6 RAM
  • Five eight-way A100 GPU nodes consisting of:
    – Dual AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processors
    – 2 TB DDR4-3200 RAM
    – 1.6 TB NVMe solid-state disk
    – Eight NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 40 GB HBM2 RAM and NVLink
  • One MI100 GPU node consisting of:
    – Dual AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processors
    – 2 TB DDR4-3200 RAM
    – 1.6 TB NVMe solid-state disk
    – Eight AMD MI100 GPUs with 32 GB HBM2 RAM
  • Eight utility nodes will provide login access, data transfer capability and other services
  • 200 Gb/s HPE SlingShot network fabric
  • 7 PB of disk-based Lustre storage
  • 3 PB of flash-based storage for data-intensive workloads

COMING SOON:

NCSA’s Delta is uniquely suited for artificial intelligence and machine learning, and DeltaAI will build on these already-strong foundations. DeltaAI is expected to launch in 2024. Sign up for The Download, our newsletter, to stay up to speed on new developments at NCSA.

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