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Jetstream2: AI for Everyone

Now in production for the national research community, Jetstream2 brings high performance computing to more academic communities

News and events Sep 6, 2022

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The frontiers of science are rapidly expanding due to the increasing availability of massive amounts of data and a variety of analytical tools. To effectively create knowledge from information, and to make it possible to leverage new artificial intelligence (AI) tools, researchers need on-demand, interactive, and programmatic cloud services. 

Since 2016, the Jetstream system has given thousands of U.S. researchers access to a powerful cloud-based environment that complements other National Science Foundation (NSF) systems—all from a laptop or tablet—allowing them to explore and understand immense amounts of data. Supporting computation, experimentation, and teaching, Jetstream has benefited researchers from a wide range of fields by focusing on usability and support. 

Jetstream2, the next generation of cloud computing, has successfully completed its early operations phase that began in February 2022, and after a recommendation from an NSF panel of experts is now in production for the national research community. The system is designed to be user-friendly for researchers who have limited experience with high performance computing (HPC) and software. It serves smaller academic communities with no access to such resources, while simultaneously providing a uniquely flexible environment for individuals looking to take advantage of the latest cloud-native approaches. Jetstream2 is a transformative update to a widely used system, providing eight petaFLOPS of virtual supercomputing power and 17 petabytes of storage to simplify data analysis, boost discovery, and increase availability of AI resources. This system will serve more students than any other NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure resource, better equipping them to fully participate in the evolving STEM workforce. 

During the early operations period, the Jetstream2 team successfully integrated the resource into the NSF Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) project that launched on September 1st; ACCESS is the successor to the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). Through recent funding action in support of this transition, and in support of a successful NSF panel review, the Jetstream2 project now has spending authority for $14.5M of an anticipated $24.5M over the project lifetime. 

“We intend Jetstream2 to be a democratizing force within the NSF ecosystem, allowing researchers and educators access to cutting-edge resources regardless of project scale.”

—David Y Hancock, director of advanced cyberinfrastructure, University Information Technology Services, Indiana University

In addition, the Jetstream2 cloud environment has other benefits: 

  • Extends a broad range of hardware and services, including larger and faster storage systems, graphics processing units (GPUs), large memory nodes, virtual clusters, and much more.  
  • Easy to expand and reconfigure and can support diverse modes of on-demand access.  
  • Provides infrastructure for science gateways, scientific databases, and other “always-on” services as well as access to on-demand interactive computing and data analysis resources.  
  • Provides a core services model for a practical approach to distributed cloud computing that will give academic institutions an incentive to invest their own funds in new advanced cyberinfrastructure facilities. 

“The worldwide OpenMRS community—a collection of health information technology experts working together to support the development and implementation of a leading open-source medical record system for resource-constrained environments—depends on cloud infrastructure to support forums, wikis, single sign-on, continuous integration, and development and demonstration environments. Jetstream, and now Jetstream2, not only allows us to host the OpenMRS infrastructure, but also maintain it and adapt it with a small group of volunteers using DevOps best practices.”

—Burke Mamlin, co-founder and chief software architect of OpenMRS, associate professor of clinical medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, and investigator at the Regenstrief Institute, said.

The Jetstream2 project is led by Research Technologies, a division of University Information Technology Services (UITS) and a center in the Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) at Indiana University (IU).  

Jetstream2’s primary cloud is at Indiana University Bloomington, with regional clouds at Arizona State University, the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing, University of Hawaiʻi, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, Texas. Additional partnerships with the University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins University, and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) will contribute to Jetstream2’s unparalleled usability and support for a broad range of scientific efforts. 

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant 2005506. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 

 

About the Pervasive Technology Institute at Indiana University 

The Pervasive Technology Institute at IU is a collaborative organization designed to marshal IU’s computational experts and resources quickly in response to societal, research, and educational needs. In partnership with UITS, PTI also led the original Jetstream award. PTI was established in 1999 by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment and has continued to lead productive uses and applications of research technologies for over 20 years. 

  

About University Information Technology Services 

University Information Technology Services is part of the Office of the Vice President for IT and Chief Information Officer for Indiana University. It provides services across all IU campuses to support the mission of Indiana University. 

  

Learn more about Jetstream2 

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