Milestone Unlocked: UITS Puma HPC Accelerates Toward the Future of Research

In the rapidly advancing field of technology, the University Information Technology Services (UITS) High-Performance Computing (HPC) system, Puma, stands as a prominent example of modern computational power. Developed in 2020, Puma has swiftly become an indispensable asset for pioneering scientific research. Among its notable contributions is its role in supporting the NEO-Surveyor Space Mission, a critical initiative aimed at enhancing planetary defense through the detection and study of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).

Over the past four years, Puma has been a vital resource for researchers at the University of Arizona, recently reaching a significant milestone by processing its 10 millionth computational job. To put this achievement into perspective, if each job represented a single step, the distance covered would be equivalent to walking to Niagara Falls and back, highlighting the remarkable scale of Puma's computational contributions.

David Castellano, postdoctoral research associate, studies evolutionary processes that generate the complex networks that comprise life and was the researcher who was able to push Puma to this milestone. “Understanding the relationship between DNA mutation rates and fitness effects is central to evolutionary biology. My work is investigating this relationship in three species: Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, and Arabidopsis thaliana.” As for how a High Performing Computing Device is essential to his work, Castellano explains “The inference of fitness effects from population genomics data requires intensive computation which could not be possible without Puma.” 

Puma has established itself as an indispensable High-Performance Computing resource, driving research innovation with no indication of slowing down. This milestone is just one of many anticipated achievements as it continues to support cutting-edge scientific endeavors.