Tennessee Tech’s new supercomputer is a big stride for the University and Upper Cumberland
GENESIS, the university's most powerful research instrument to date, is designed to pull federal dollars, talent, and high-wage jobs into a part of the state that has had little advanced-computing infrastructure.
Tennessee Tech University (Tech) has switched on GENESIS, a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster that ranks as the largest scientific instrument the university has ever operated. University leadership is saying that the HPC cluster will help position Tech as an even stronger economic-development engine for the Upper Cumberland region, with opportunities extending far beyond research.
For example, the new computing capacity gives Tech a competitive edge when it comes to obtaining federal research grants, doctoral talent, and private-public industry partnerships.
GENESIS was commissioned by Tech’s Advanced Scalable Computing, Extreme Networks and Data (ASCEND) Center, which is the university’s hub for high-performance computing and AI infrastructure research. The Center is led by Anthony Skjellum, who also serves as one of Tech’s professors of computer science.
Built across 27 server nodes and 108 AMD Instinct MI300A accelerated processing units, GENESIS can run more than 13 quadrillion calculations per second. It is built to handle workloads across engineering simulation, large-scale machine learning, AI-driven threat analysis, environmental modeling, smart manufacturing, and materials science.
“High-performance computing makes AI possible,” Skjellum said. “GENESIS offers our researchers the ability to work directly with a world-class computing system that equips them to win major federal grants, attract outstanding doctoral students and become go-to partners for national laboratories and industry leaders.”
Where the system lives is equally valuable to the Upper Cumberland region. GENESIS will be housed at Tennessee Tech’s Crossville Research Center, which the university envisions as the seed of a high-technology research park serving Upper Cumberland and Middle Tennessee.
The idea is to cluster academic researchers, companies, federal partners, and startups in one place. It’s a model that has been successfully executed, and in turn reshaped regions elsewhere in the state. One example being the University of Tennessee Research Park at Cherokee Farms in Knoxville.
“By anchoring the Crossville Research Center with world-class computing infrastructure, Tech is creating a collaborative campus where university researchers, technology companies, federal agency partners and startups work side by side on the frontier problems of AI, computing, cybersecurity and data science,” said Terry Saltsman, Tech’s chief government affairs officer and director of the Crossville Research Center.
It’s a big deal for Tech students, as well. They will have hands-on access to a similar instrument that national labs and major tech employers use. It will allow Tech graduates to be even more competitive when applying to AI and advanced computing roles in Tennessee and across the nation.
“As Tennessee’s economy becomes increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity and data-intensive technologies, university research infrastructure like GENESIS plays an important role in developing workforce talent, research capacity and innovation ecosystem needed to compete nationally for high-tech investment and high-wage jobs,” said Michael Aikens, acting vice president for research and economic development and executive director for the Center for Rural Innovation at Tech.
Taken together, the machine, its home in Crossville, and the talent it is meant to draw represent a single coordinated effort to convert raw computing power into research, companies, and careers rooted in the Upper Cumberland.
Learn more about GENESIS here.
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