Indiana Initiative for Economic Development

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is the Indiana Initiative for Economic Development?

The Indiana Initiative for Economic Development is a partnership between IBM, Indiana University, Purdue University and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC). It is a focused economic development program intended to foster technology development and job growth in the State of Indiana, by making advanced computing technology and expertise available to private industry.

Q. How do Indiana University and Purdue University contribute to this Initiative?

As participants in the Indiana Initiative for Economic Development, Indiana University and Purdue University offer Indiana’s industries computer resources and support for research and development. The main element of the universities’ contribution to the Initiative is the use of the IBM Big Red Blade Center cluster. This is one of the most powerful university computers in the US, and one of the 50 fastest machines in the world. Use of this computer is offered to Indiana’s industries, free of charge, for R&D projects that qualify under the Initiative’s guidelines.

Those industries or companies that wish to pursue this opportunity will typically forge an agreement with either Indiana University or Purdue University (whose research strengths are both different and complementary), and in so doing, have access to the resources that university makes available via this initiative. Participating companies will also receive full operational support and will draw upon the expertise of computational researchers assigned specifically to this Initiative. IU and Purdue are committed to helping the participants make best use of these computational resources.

Q. What is Big Red, and how will it help R&D?

The Big Red Blade Center Cluster is among the top university-owned computers in the country. Technically, it is a cluster of IBM JS21 Blade nodes, each node housing two dual-core PowerPC processors, running at 2.5 GHz (for more technical detail see the Big Red web page). The cluster architecture is well suited for industrial R&D computations, such as structural analysis, fluid flow simulations, drug discovery, and visualizations, which are often massively parallel. If your company already uses supercomputers, this may be the ideal machine on which to test a leading-edge idea, something that may be currently beyond your capacity. If you are using mostly desktop-class computers, this initiative gives you the opportunity to try out new methodologies and develop expertise in massively parallel computing

Q. What is Gold, and how will it help R&D?

The Gold Blade Center Cluster is among the top university-owned computers in the country. Technically, it is a cluster of IBM JS21 Blade nodes, each node housing two dual-core PowerPC processors, running at 2.5 GHz (for more technical detail see the Gold web page). The cluster architecture is well suited for industrial R&D computations, such as structural analysis, fluid flow simulations, drug discovery, and visualizations, which are often massively parallel. If your company already uses supercomputers, this may be the ideal machine on which to test a leading-edge idea, something that may be currently beyond your capacity. If you are using mostly desktop-class computers, this initiative gives you the opportunity to try out new methodologies and develop expertise in massively parallel computing

Q. How do we make best use of this program?

Your intended use of the resources should be in line with the objectives of the Initiative: it should contribute to the growth and competitiveness of Indiana’s industry, it should foster creation of high-technology jobs in Indiana, and it should hold the promise of yielding new and important technologies. These objectives can be fulfilled by companies large and small, by established industries, and by start-ups.

Once you have described your project, and listed your technical requirements, as described in the Proposal Guidelines, your proposal will be evaluated according to the guidelines of the Economic Development Advisory Committee, which is the State’s governing body for this Initiative.

The technical requirements of your project will also be evaluated. The Big Red cluster is flexible and complex; therefore technical staff will be available to provide you some initial guidance even before you submit a formal proposal, so that you can better estimate your requirements for the use of the machine.

Once your proposal is approved, you will receive an affiliate computer account, and an allotment of the machine resources: CPU time, number of nodes, amount of storage, and so on. Technical support staff will be available to assist you in using the machine at every stage, from problem analysis to code optimization. It is expected, however, that your own technical staff will perform production-level code development for your project.

Q. What are the arrangements regarding confidentiality and intellectual property?

Indiana University has no claims on the intellectual property that your company develops independently under this program, and you acquire no rights to any part of the university’s resources. For reference, consult the sample User Agreement; keep in mind that the terms of your Agreement with IU may differ, depending on the proposed use of the resources.

As a multi-user university system, the Big Red environment already provides the usual system-level confidentiality and protection of user data. However, we are sensitive to the fact that the commercial environment often requires more stringent protection. Your proposal should be explicit about your confidentiality requirements, and IU will make every reasonable effort to honor them.