The institute for cyber-enabled research: regional organization to promote computation in science

Abstract

The Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (iCER) at Michigan State University (MSU) was established in 2009 to coordinate and support multidisciplinary resources for computation and computational sciences. iCER is the home of MSU's centralized High Performance Computing resources, which include a heterogeneous compute cluster with various hardware designed to meet the needs of different scientists. The goal of iCER is not to maximize Flops, but instead to maximize the amount of quality science being accomplished. This paper outlines many of the initiatives that iCER has taken to support researchers at MSU and throughout Michigan; describes the structure and evolution of iCER and its relationship with XSEDE; and offers insights for other institutions interested in putting together a similar computational organization.