NRP’s Vision: Open National Infrastructure for Research & Education Beyond R1 Institutions

Categories RENS & NRENS Technology & Innovation

Frank Wuerthwein has a vision for the future of the National Research Platform (NRP), and he laid out those hopes during the recent Sixth National Research Platform Workshop (6NRP).

Wuerthwein, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, shared how approximately 3,900 accredited higher learning institutions in the U.S. can be federated into a single system. He said the long-term goal is to create an open national infrastructure that allows the federation of cyberinfrastructure at all the nation’s higher education institutions, non-profit research institutions, and national libraries.

"That’s one hell of an aspiration,” Wuerthwein told the attendees. “So, how can we have any chance in hell to actually achieve this?"

Growth Strategies: Collaborating and Reducing Institutional Costs

Though it might seem like a lofty goal, it’s not impossible, according to Wuerthwein. He said the NRP’s road to expansion would involve, for starters, engaging the existing regional research and education networks (RENs) and their user communities, such as CENIC and the Great Plains Network (GPN). To reach all those RENs, Wuerthwein proposes to use the Quilt, the organization RENs use to coordinate with each other.

He said the path ahead could also entail exploiting the ongoing transformation of higher education toward the increasing use of data and computing as an essential part of their classroom education. Wuerthwein shared an interesting slide for UC San Diego—which has its own, albeit smaller, version of the NRP—using its platform. He noted the massive growth in use by social science students from academic year 2023 through academic year 2024.

Clearly, sciences not previously considered “big data” are now well enabled by it amid this ongoing transformation. Wuerthwein is predicting rapid growth in the physical and biological sciences.

**UC San Diego courses by division, cumulative for all time, supported by NRP.**

In addition, he said the NRP reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) of computer and data infrastructures for colleges. Wuerthwein mentioned that the equipment cost of UC San Diego’s educational cluster—used by 22% of UC San Diego’s undergraduate students during the academic year 2024—was roughly $100,000.

He added that schools needn’t buy top-of-the-line research equipment because for educational use, much more cost-effective equipment is available. He also said that the TCO is lowered when campuses bring their equipment to NRP and let its technical team handle its management and educators’ support of equipment.

Members and interested institutions could also lean into the Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) program by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to introduce AI hardware to institutions, he added.

“As we solve the AI education TCO pain point for colleges, we advance their research capabilities as a desired side effect,” Wuerthwein said. “I’m working with the premise that for the vast majority of those 3,900 colleges, education is the bread and butter that pays the bills, and research is where the pleasure comes in.

“And if I want to make a transformative change, I need to address what pays the bills and then bring in infrastructure for research by the back door, so to speak, as a side effect. And that is ultimately what we’re doing via this strategy.”

CENIC’s Role in Providing Strategic Guidance

Of the 20 million students in the US, two million are enrolled in California’s Community Colleges, all CENIC Charter members.

“That’s an enormous number,” Wuerthwein said. “For me, that fact means that if we can manage with NRP to serve the community colleges of California, then we’re 10% done. Therefore, we have a fighting chance—whatever we learn there—to export and apply it to other areas all over the country.”

In other words, NRP can learn much in California and work with other RENs to determine how that could evolve into farther-reaching national infrastructure.

Current Status of NRP Growth

In terms of hardware, the NRP now has 425 nodes across the US, Europe, and Asia—shown below—with the CENIC AIR portion highlighted. The hardware sits at 72 organizations, including six international, 21 national points of presence (PoPs), and 45 US colleges.

OSDF sites are exclusive to the Open Science Data Foundation.

NRP aims to grow US colleges from 45 to approximately 1,000, increase the number of network PoPs by 100, and later determine how international sites might expand.

“The growth desire lies primarily in the colleges,” Wuerthwein said.

Last year, there were 285 NRP namespaces, or projects, across 35 colleges that used more than 100 GPU hours and 100 CPU core hours. Those 35 colleges used hundreds to millions of NRP GPU and CPU hours last year, including 16 minority-serving institutions and four in EPSCoR states. Thus, growth is present in terms of both the number of institutions participating and how heavily they are doing so.

Moreover, all these numbers are trending upwards, coming “from a very wide and ever-growing number of institutions,” in Wuerthwein’s words.

Speaking to the status of classroom activities on NRP, he said the platform has been used by more than 2,500 students across more than 70 courses across nine institutions.

Wuerthwein’s entire presentation, with others from the 6NRP conference, can be viewed on the Qualcomm Institute’s YouTube channel.