NEH-DOE Office of Science Collaboration: High Performance Computing for the Humanities

NEH-DOE Office of Science Collaboration: High Performance Computing for the Humanities is sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. This program provides humanities scholars with access to DOE supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), along with training and support.

Humanities High Performance Computing Resource | National Endowment for the Humanities Humanities High Performance Computing Resource 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. April 22, 2008.

The Chronicle of Higher Education . "A Supercomputer Takes Humanities Scholars Into the 21st Century." May 9, 2008.

HPCWire . "High Performance Humanities." July 29, 2008.

HPCWire . "The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics." September 5, 2008.

HPCWire . "I-CHASS Earns $250,000 NEH Grant." December 12, 2008.

I-CHASS/NCSA. " Supercomputing resources available to Illinois humanities, arts, and social science researchers ." December 22, 2008.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. " Humanities and High Performance Computers Connect at NERSC ." December 31, 2008.

Charlottesville Daily Progress . " UVa Scientists Marry Humanities, Technology ." December 16, 2009.

The Chronicle of Higher Education . " Give a Humanist a Supercomputer.... " January 9, 2010.

Calit2 . " Supercomputing to Help UC San Diego Researchers Visualize Cultural Patterns ." Terras, Melissa.

" The Potential and Problems in using High Performance Computing in the Arts and Humanities: the Researching e-Science Analysis of Census Holdings (ReACH) Project ." Digital Humanities Quarterly (Fall 2009: v3 n4) January 14, 2010. Educause Podcast with the NEH's Brett Bobley " Humanities and Supercomputing ."

February 18, 2010. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory . " A Computational Science Approach for Analyzing Culture ."

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center ( NERSC ) is the flagship scientific computing facility for the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. As one of the largest facilities in the world devoted to providing computational resources and expertise for basic scientific research, NERSC is a world leader in accelerating scientific discovery through computation.

NERSC is located at Berkeley Lab in Berkeley, California. If you are interested in applying for an allocation of computing hours at NERSC, please check out Applying for your First NERSC Allocation .

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. NEH's Start Up Grant Program Invites HHPC Projects If you are in the basic research phase of an HHPC project but still need time to experiment and prepare for a future project, you may wish to consider a Level I Digital Humanities Start Up Grant .

These Level I grants are small awards of up to $25,000 and can be used for early prototypes and experimentation for digital humanities projects. They are available both to institutional applicants and independent scholars. For more information, please consult the Start Up Grant guidelines .

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.

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.