Jetstream2: AI for Everyone

The frontiers of science are rapidly expanding due to the increasing availability of massive amounts of data and a variety of analytical tools. To effectively create knowledge from information and to make it possible to leverage new artificial intelligence (AI) tools, researchers need on-demand, interactive, and programmatic cloud services.

Since 2016, the Jetstream system has given thousands of U.S. researchers access to a powerful cloud-based environment that complements other National Science Foundation (NSF) systems—all from a laptop or tablet—allowing them to explore and understand immense amounts of data. Supporting computation, experimentation, and teaching, Jetstream has benefited researchers from a wide range of fields by focusing on usability and support.

Jetstream2, the next generation of cloud computing, has successfully completed its early operations phase that began in February 2022. After a recommendation from an NSF panel of experts, Jetstream2 is now in production for the national research community.

"We intend Jetstream2 to be a democratizing force within the NSF ecosystem, allowing researchers and educators access to cutting-edge resources regardless of project scale," said David Hancock, director of advanced cyberinfrastructure, University Information Technology Services, Indiana University.

The system is designed to be user-friendly for researchers who have limited experience with high performance computing (HPC) and software. It serves smaller academic communities with no access to such resources, while simultaneously providing a uniquely flexible environment for individuals looking to take advantage of the latest cloud-native approaches.

Like its predecessor, Jetstream2 will continue to tear down barriers to discovery. It will provide flexible advanced computing capabilities for researchers that may not otherwise have sufficient resources at their institutions. And it gives educators a consistent, accessible compute environment that they can bring into the classroom.

Jetstream2's primary cloud is at Indiana University Bloomington with regional clouds at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), Arizona State University, the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing, and the University of Hawai'i.

"Like its predecessor, Jetstream2 will continue to tear down barriers to discovery. It will provide flexible advanced computing capabilities for researchers that may not otherwise have sufficient resources at their institutions. And it gives educators a consistent, accessible compute environment that they can bring into the classroom," said John Fonner, co-PI on the Jetstream2 award and director of special projects at TACC.

Jetstream2 is a transformative update to a widely used system, providing eight petaflops of virtual supercomputing power and 17 petabytes of storage to simplify data analysis, boost discovery, and increase availability of AI resources.

During the early operations period, the Jetstream2 team successfully integrated the resource into the NSF Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) project that launched on September 1st; ACCESS is the successor to the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).

In addition, the Jetstream2 cloud environment has other benefits:

• Extends a broad range of hardware and services, including larger and faster storage systems, graphics processing units (GPUs), large memory nodes, virtual clusters, and much more.
• Easy to expand and reconfigure and can support diverse modes of on-demand access.
• Provides infrastructure for science gateways, scientific databases, and other "always-on" services as well as access to on-demand interactive computing and data analysis resources.
• Provides a core services model for a practical approach to distributed cloud computing that will give academic institutions an incentive to invest their own funds in new advanced cyberinfrastructure facilities.

The Jetstream2 project is led by Research Technologies, a division of University Information Technology Services (UITS) and a center in the Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) at Indiana University (IU).

Additional partnerships with the University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins University, and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) will contribute to Jetstream2's unparalleled usability and support for a broad range of scientific efforts.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant 2005506.