NSF Award
2419816
In Summer 2024, the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) will launch Aurora, which will be the world’s most powerful public supercomputer. Despite the centrality of supercomputer development to maintaining U.S. global leadership position in the advancement of science and technology and substantial taxpayer investment, the public rarely has the opportunity to stand in the thrumming, chilly machine room among the rows and rows of towers of compute nodes that comprise a supercomputer. As a result, questions such as, “How do you build a supercomputer?” “What does a supercomputer do?”, “What do scientists and other staff do all day at the supercomputing center?”, “What does the supercomputer do that affects me?”, and “Why does the US need the fastest supercomputers?” don’t have concrete answers. This project is designed to answer those questions and deepen public understanding of massive supercomputing infrastructures for generating new forms of knowledge.<br/><br/>The researchers have been invited by the ANL Division Director to do on-site and remote observational and interview research with individuals and processes related to Aurora, including Argonne employees working on Aurora, scientists running projects on Aurora, and the technical documentation that makes Aurora possible. The project will proceed in two related phases: The first phase will focus on the everyday practices of supercomputing and how a big science project is used and maintained through the work of scientists, operations staff, and technical documentation processes; the second phase will move from analysis of the everyday practices of supercomputing to higher-level examinations of how the global competition for supercomputing leadership has been shaped by, and also shapes, the U.S.’s identity as a leader in scientific and technological advancement. The project is designed to increase public awareness of the many hidden elements of supercomputing while also developing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at Portland State University and Clemson University to work with the U.S. National Laboratory system and learn about the world of public supercomputing.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
