Holyoke Innovation District

The Innovation District for the Pioneer Valley

A Green High-Performance Computing Center (GHPCC): On June 11, 2009, Governor Deval Patrick, joined by MIT President Susan Hockfield, University of Massachusetts President Jack Wilson, Boston University President Robert Brown, Housing and Economic Development Secretary Greg Bialecki, and representatives of EMC and Cisco, signed a Memorandum of Understanding announcing the desire to locate a state-of-the-art Green High Performance Computing Center (GHPCC) in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Considered the “third leg of science” along with theory and experimentation, high performance computing uses a large number of extremely powerful and fast computers to carry out advanced computing in key areas of research such as life sciences, clean energy, and climate change. For world-class universities, high performance computing has become a necessity to compete with other research institutions in today’s world. High performance computing is also a catalyst for innovation that opens novel research avenues, accelerates the pace of discovery, enables the development of new products and services, and creates efficiencies throughout the innovation process.

The GHPCC planned for Holyoke will not only provide an invaluable increase in the computing capacity that would bring all these benefits to the partnering institutions. It would also serve as a showcase of green energy use and green facilities design, be scalable to meet the needs of additional partners and computational demands, and serve as a catalyst for economic, educational, and workforce development in Holyoke and the region.

MIT had developed plans in 2007 to locate a high performance computing center in Holyoke due to the region’s quality access to the internet, affordable land, and availability of low-cost and renewable energy. The impact of the global economic recession led MIT to suspend their plans and subsequently reach out to leaders at the University of Massachusetts to jointly address capacity needs for high performance computing.

Today, with the addition of BU in the planned partnership, some of the state’s leading research institutions are collaborating to make a Green High Performance Computing Center a reality in Holyoke. With the full endorsement of Governor Patrick, this team began to investigate the opportunity for a shared GHPCC facility, signing the Memorandum of Understanding in June and embarking on a 120-day planning and feasibility exercise. Led by the management consulting firm Accenture, the partners have completed a feasibility assessment of the project and have signed a statement of principles which enables the GHPCC project to move forward to a design and development phase.