The High Performance Computing (HPC) systems are designed to grow with the campus needs. The base systems are purchased and supported with central UITS funding. Research groups can add resources (processors, memory, storage, etc) to the base HPC systems as funding becomes available.  Those research groups will have first priority on the resources they add to the system.

This concept, base system plus expansion, allows research groups to take advantage of central machine room space, operations and administration of the computing systems while maintaining first priority access for the resources they purchase.  The research groups can request policy and allocation options designed specifically for their users.

An additional benefit to research group members is that expansion resources, which are integrated into the base systems, can be used in conjunction with base resources to address computational projects that would be beyond the capacity of the group resources if they were configured as an independent system.

The University research computing community benefits from expansions to the base systems by having additional computing resources available.  If the expansion resources are not fully utilized by the purchasing group they will be made available for general use.  The joint operation of base and expansion resources is designed to maintain economical and full use of all HPC resources.