Page 10 - OIT Progress Report: 2023 Edition

Infrastructure:
Providing Power
To Fuel Change
A RELIABLE AND EFFICIENT IT INFRASTRUCTURE IS THE BACKBONE OF ANY THRIVING EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION. THE OIT INFRASTRUCTURE TEAM WORKS DILIGENTLY BEHIND THE SCENES YET PLAYS A PIVOTAL ROLE IN ENHANCING THE FACULTY, STAFF, AND STUDENT EXPERIENCE. FROM SEAMLESS CONNECTIVITY TO ENSURING SOLID SECURITY MEASURES, THEIR EXPERTISE ENSURES A SOLID FOUNDATION FOR PRODUCTIVITY AND INNOVATION ACROSS OUR CAMPUS COMMUNITY. THEY HAVE WORKED TIRELESSLY ON AN ARRAY OF PROJECTS TO ENSURE OUR CAMPUS CONTINUES TO THRIVE IN THE EVER-EVOLVING DIGITAL LANDSCAPE.
OIT Infrastructure’s Impact on SMU’s Research Community
After our exciting announcement in November 2021 to collaborate with NVIDIA and strengthen SMU’s AI infrastructure to implement the NVIDIA DGX SuperPODTM, OIT has continued efforts to fully leverage this powerful platform. We have made significant progress in increasing awareness about the capabilities of this High-Performance Computing
(HPC) tool that is not only a benefit to SMU but to the research community at large.
Last November, people from throughout SMU,
and the world, were able to come together to share knowledge and celebrate recent innovations at Supercomputing 2022 hosted in Dallas. In addition to sharing lessons learned about the SuperPOD with colleagues from around the country, we had the honor to host a landmark ribbon cutting event and tours of the University Data Center. Several months later, we facilitated a knowledge sharing session with a team from Oregon State University to showcase the power of the SuperPOD.
Recently, we used the SuperPOD for the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute sessions taught by two
of members of our team, Dr. Tue Vu and Dr.
John LaGrone, during the spring semester. The SuperPOD allowed us to demonstrate workflows that are typically offered in the cloud on our local hardware, opening the possibility for custom models to be built of our own data. Approximately
30 trainings were delivered in total alongside weekly office hours to onboard new users.
Assistant Professor of IT and Operations Management, Karthik Kannan shared, “Both
Tue and John were able to deliver a very effective course at a good pace. They were very professional and provided thoughtful answers and follow-ups to keep us engaged... I particularly liked how we can use many pre-trained models provided by NVIDIA to complement our research.”
Working alongside the new SuperPod, M3 was brought online in May 2023. To ensure a seamless transition for researchers from M2 to M3, the Infrastructure and Academic Technology team partnered to ensure no disruption of service would occur. Though the project did face supply chain issues which impacted their initial timeline, they were able to ultimately transition faculty to M3 efficiently.
8 OIT PROGRESS REPORT 2023