Huntsville supercomputer team provides cradle-to-grave procurement

Huntsville Center High Performance Computing Program
Published July 2, 2021
The Onyx Super Computer at the Engineering Research and Development Center, one of five DOD Supercomputer Resource Centers, consists of 212,000 processors and can perform 1.7 quadrillion (1,700,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center)

The Onyx Super Computer at the Engineering Research and Development Center, one of five DOD Supercomputer Resource Centers, consists of 212,000 processors and can perform 1.7 quadrillion (1,700,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – When the Department of Defense needed an innovative strategy for meeting the ever-changing, highly technical requirements of its High Performance Computing Modernization Program, it called on the experts at the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville.

Huntsville Center’s High Performance Computing team was created in 2012 to provide cradle-to grave procurement of supercomputers specifically for the HPCMP, but they are expanding their reach to offer their critical program-management and contract-support services to all government agencies. They are currently the only execution team within the DOD that has three major acquisition vehicles in place to provide key supercomputing deliverables in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

The HPCMP’s mission is to accelerate technology development and transition to superior defense capabilities, in order to provide DOD scientists and engineers with the resources necessary to solve the most demanding warfighter problems through the strategic application of high-performance computing, networking, and computational expertise.

The program comprises three primary elements: five DoD Supercomputing Resource Centers, which provide large scale supercomputers and operations staff; the Defense Research and Engineering Network, a nationwide high-speed, low-latency, research and development network connecting the DSRCs and major user communities; and a collection of efforts in software applications to develop, modernize, and maintain software to address DoD's science and engineering challenges.

The High-Performance Computing Management Office is located at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and administratively reports to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics, and technology.

Huntsville Center’s HPC team is a highly skilled, multi-disciplined group of subject-matter experts in the areas of program management, project management, engineering, contracting, resource management, and legal counsel. Additionally, the team has members with vast amounts of experience in information technology, networking, cybersecurity, hardware, training and communications infrastructure. They work closely with the HPCMO staff to strategize, plan and deliver key products and services to all of the DOD centers and their stakeholders.

The critical acquisition vehicles used by the Center’s HPC team provide for the procurement, testing, installation, operation, administration and maintenance of supercomputers. This efficiency reduces defense system costs by shortening the design cycle and reducing reliance on expensive and destructive live experiments and prototype demonstrations.

Current national security events mandate the most agile and modern technology to meet the Warfighter’s needs. Thanks to Huntsville Center’s team of experts, the DOD is able to maintain its competitive edge on a global stage by continually modernizing its high performance computing assets.