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Research Computing

Last updated: January 21, 2025
Accelerating your research at the UW

UW Information Technology collaborates with partners across the University to support world-class research with up-to-date tools and resources capable of handling your research needs. We offer a wide array of research computing tools and solutions and provide consultation to help you choose a service tailored to your research needs.

We offer:

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One-on-one consultation

Whether you’re a faculty researcher or a student, we offer expert computing advice to keep your research computing work on track. We can help you find the best computing solution for your research needs, including supercomputers or volunteer or commercial cloud systems. Email us at help@uw.edu with “research computing” on the subject line.

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Hyak, the UW’s own Supercomputer

UW-IT operates the on-site Hyak shared, high performance supercomputing cluster, capable of handling a broad range of workloads, from traditional high performance computing to emerging Big Data problems and everything in between.

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GPUs for machine learning

UW-IT offers multiple ways to leverage the power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for research computing, and in particular machine learning. UW’s Hyak high-performance supercomputing research cluster supports over 800 GPUs to date, a new GPU cluster of 192 GPUs will be launched in 2025. Research computing experts at UW-IT can help you determine if GPU computing would benefit your research needs, and help you navigate the options to choose an option that works for you.

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Cloud computing for research

UW-IT works with several commercial vendors, including Microsoft, Amazon and Google, to match your research to the best cloud solution. In Partnership with the eScience Institute, UW-IT consultants can help you evaluate the cloud as a compute and storage platform, understand costs and learning curve, and help you integrate data science tools, technologies and methods into your research. If you’re new to working in the cloud or want to expand your skillset, there are many cloud training opportunities to get you started or take you to the next level.

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On-site large-scale storage

UW-IT offers on-premises data storage services including the Lolo high capacity collaboration tape archive file service and Kopah S3-compatible research data storage so researchers  have convenient, cost-effictive means to secure, long-term data storage and can share data sets with collaborators quickly, on and off campus.

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High Speed Research Network

UW-IT offers a large-capacity high performance research network supporting fast data transfers within and outside of the UW network.

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Students

Join the UW’s Research Computing Club, meet graduate and undergraduate students interested in high-performance computing and gain access to Hyak. Leverage the power of cloud computing resources available through the Cloud Credit Program. If you have a unique research computing need, send us a note at help@uw.edu with “research computing” on the subject line.

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Additional resources

A full picture of research computing at University of Washington is represented by the collaborative efforts of UW-IT Research Computing and the UW eScience Institute, which are working together to build a supportive community that strives to help support your research. Get started by visiting the Data Science Studio on the 6th floor of the Physics-Astronomy Building (PAB) or the eScience Institute. You’ll find consulting office hours, incubator sessions, workshops, seminars, hackathons and helpful scientists with outstanding data science skills, plus plenty of coffee.