In October 2018, the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) received an equipment grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF #1828265) for a GPU-based system for College of Engineering research and education. Since that time, EVL staff has surveyed vendors, analyzed UIC faculty’s application requirements, and then designed, purchased, received and installed its GPU-based system from Liqid. EVL refers to its new computing system as Composable Platform as a Service Instrument for Deep Learning & Visualization (COMPaaS DLV).

Liqid is a start-up company specializing in systems integration (and has major industrial partners such as Dell, Intel, Nvidia and Mellanox), who currently sells its next-generation “composable infrastructure” computer systems primarily to data centers. Working with UIC faculty, it became apparent that this advanced architecture could address their diverse application requirements as their data moves through the computational pipeline (e.g., data gathering, filtering, computing, storing).

EVL worked with Liqid to educate them about how its product could be tailored to meet the needs of the academic research market, helping them realize that science and engineering research is a potential market for their product. Working together, Liqid has configured a system to suit the needs of EVL’s research focus.

Liqid has published a case study, “UIC Utilizes Liqid Composable Infrastructure for Uneven Applications in Scientific Research” that explores EVL’s use of COMPaaS DLV.