Humanities High Performance Computing

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Humanities High Performance Computing Resource Page

What is "Humanities High-Performance Computing"?

The term "high performance computing" (HPC) is often used interchangeably with "supercomputing." It refers to very fast computers, capable of performing calculations many times faster than standard desktop machines. High Performance Computing is used mainly by scientific disciplines for processing huge amounts of data, data mining, and simulation. That is, using an enormous amount of data to simulate a physical object or series of events. For example, scientists use HPC to simulate hurricanes; the auto industry uses HPC to simulate car crashes; the military uses HPC to simulate explosions. Because of the enormous speed available with HPC, tasks can be done that normal desktop PCs could never tackle.

So what do we mean by "HHPC?" Humanities High-Performance Computing (HHPC) refers to the use of high-performance machines for humanities and social science projects. Currently, only a small number of humanities scholars are taking advantage of high-performance computing. But just as the sciences have, over time, begun to tap the enormous potential of HPC, the humanities are beginning to as well. Humanities scholars often deal with large sets of unstructured data. This might take the form of historical newspapers, books, election data, archaeological fragments, audio or video contents, or a host of others. HHPC offers the humanist opportunities to sort through, mine, and better understand and visualize this data.

Joint NEH/DOE Grant Program for HHPC

The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Office of Science at the United States Department of Energy (DOE) are working together to provide humanities scholars with access to DOE supercomputers. These grants provide computer time on DOE machines at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as training and support to enable scholars to take full advantage of those resources.

Interested scholars will apply directly to NERSC, and hours will be awarded under the terms of the DOE's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. The INCITE program was conceived specifically to seek out computationally intensive, large-scale research projects with the potential to significantly advance key areas in science and engineering. With this partnership with NEH, the hope is that comparable research projects in the humanities will be able to take advantage of high performance computing resources. Successful applicants will be given access to computer and support resources at NERSC. In addition, winners will receive travel reimbursement funds to enable them (up to two people per project) to attend on-site training at NERSC.

For more information about how to apply for this program, please see our NEH/DOE program guidelines.

NEH's Collaborative Research Program Invites HHPC Projects

Are you working on a humanities project that requires high-performance computing? If so, you may wish to consider applying to NEH's Collaborative Research program. Collaborative Research Grants support original research undertaken by a team of two or more scholars or research coordinated by an individual scholar that, because of its scope or complexity, requires additional staff and resources beyond the individual's salary. So, for example, if you are a humanities scholar who will be collaborating with a computer scientist or perhaps with a high performance computing center, then you might be a good candidate for our Collaborative Research program. Awards are made for one to three years and normally range from $25,000 to $100,000 per year. For more information, please see the Collaborative Research guidelines.

Training Opportunities

TeraGrid User Portal -- The TeraGrid User Portal offers an overview of training opportunities at all eleven NSF-sponsored TeraGrid partner sites. You will find classes on many aspects of high performance computing, including many classes aimed at new users.

NERSC Training Site -- The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) offers a number of training classes on high performance computing.

July 28 - August 1, 2008 is the date for the Texas Advanced Computing Center's (TACC) Summer Supercomputing Institute. The TACC is one of the TeraGrid partner sites.

November 15 - 21, 2007 is the date for the Supercomputing 2008 Conference. Many supercomputing projects funded by both DOE and NSF will be discussing their projects. There are also numerous training opportunities.

NEH Workshop on HHPC

In July of 2007, NEH hosted a workshop on HHPC. We asked a number of leading scholars, computer scientists, and government agencies to spend a day with us in Washington to discuss the potential of HHPC. A report on this workshop is available now. In a nutshell, the group felt that there is a great deal of potential for HHPC, over the coming years, to be an important tool for some humanities scholarship. As a result, the NEH decided to publish this HHPC Resource Page to get more information about HHPC to the humanities community. We also hope to start a dialog with the scientific and computing community to see what collaborations might take place between scientists and humanists.

Over the coming months, NEH will be encouraging applications in the areas of HHPC as well as trying to promote training events to help humanities scholars and HPC experts learn more about one another and their projects.

NSF TeraGrid for HHPC

In order to encourage humanities scholars to take advantage of the computational and data storage capabilities of the nationwide TeraGrid network, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is making accounts available to the humanities research community.

TeraGrid is an open scientific discovery infrastructure combining leadership class resources at eleven partner sites to create an integrated, persistent computational resource.

Using high-performance network connections, the TeraGrid integrates high-performance computers, data resources and tools, and high-end experimental facilities around the country. Currently, TeraGrid resources include more than 800 teraflops of computing capability and more than 30 petabytes of online and archival data storage, with rapid access and retrieval over high-performance networks. Researchers can also access more than 100 discipline-specific databases. With this combination of resources, the TeraGrid is the world's largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open academic research.

To learn more about TeraGrid, we recommend reading the TeraGrid Getting Started Guide. New users may wish to apply for a DAC development account with up to 30,000 CPU hours. More experienced users can apply for larger accounts. For details, please see the TeraGrid Allocations and Accounts page. For information about training opportunities for how to take advantage of TeraGrid, check out the training tab on the TeraGrid Portal site. Want more information? Please contact Sergiu Sanielevici, the TeraGrid Area Director for User Services.

The NEH sends its thanks to the NSF for making these resources available for humanities research.