Cultivating Multidisciplinary Research and Education on GPU Infrastructure for Mid-South Institutions at the University of Memphis: Practice and Challenge

To support rapid scientific advancement and promote access to large-scale computing resources for under-resourced institutions at the Mid-South region, the University of Memphis (UofM) established the first regional mid-scale GPU cluster, iTiger, a valuable high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. In this study, we present our continuous efforts to manage the critical cyberinfrastructure and provide essential computing supports for educators, students, and researchers in AI, data sciences, and related scientific fields in the Mid-South region, such as precision agriculture, smart transportation, and health informatics. We outline our initiatives to broaden CI adoptions across regional computing-related scientific and engineering fields, such as seed grant, workshop trainings, course integration, and other outreach activities. While we've observed promising outcomes of regional CI adoptions, we will discuss insights and challenges of Mid-South CI users, which can inspire other institutions to implement similar programs.