Compute
The Kempner Institute is building a state-of-the-art AI cluster to support advanced research on intelligence from biological, cognitive, and computational perspectives.
The Kempner Institute AI cluster incorporates a range of hardware and software technologies — including specialized machine learning accelerators and advanced networking capabilities — to enable large-scale experimentation among researchers.
Jonathan Frankle, Kempner Affiliate Faculty Member
Academia is uniquely equipped to push the frontiers of scientific knowledge in an open and curiosity-driven fashion, and this cluster is a uniquely powerful resource with which to do so.
The Kempner Institute AI cluster opened with an initial pilot installation in the Spring 2023, and, in October 2023, the Kempner announced that it had purchased an additional 384 H100 80 GB Nvidia GPUs to be added to the computational cluster. Once fully assembled, it will be one of the largest academic computer clusters in the world, consisting of approximately 800-1000 A100s or the contemporary equivalent.
Advancing Research
Using this computing power, the Kempner Institute’s scientists are able to train state-of-the-art machine learning systems and analyze large data sets, both of which are critical to advancing research on the study of intelligence.
As part of the Kempner’s commitment to open science, our research, including machine learning models, datasets, and code, is available open-source, through public platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face.
Engineering Expertise
In addition to building the AI cluster itself, the Kempner is assembling a team of engineers, led by Kempner Director of Engineering Max Shad, that helps researchers and students make the most effective possible use of the cluster and share their work open-source.
Green High Performance Computing
The Kempner’s computer nodes reside in the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), a modern datacenter in western Massachusetts shared by the Boston-area universities.