Project Summary
In 2010, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and D. E. Shaw Research (DESRES) partnered to make
the Anton special-purpose molecular dynamics (MD) supercomputer available to the national biomedical
research community for the first time. Anton enabled researchers to simulate biomolecular systems two orders
of magnitude faster than any conventional supercomputer, allowing researchers access to the critical
multi-microsecond and longer timescales on which most biologically-significant molecular processes take
place. In 2016, with operational support from NIH, DESRES made available a next generation Anton 2 system
at PSC at no cost. This multimillion-dollar gift from DESRES, with NIH support, provided a unique opportunity
for researchers to tackle even more groundbreaking biological questions. The primary goal of this project is to
provide the national biomedical research community with access to the next-generation Anton system — Anton
3. Anton 3 will provide an order of magnitude increase in simulation speed with respect to Anton 2, as well as a
ten-fold increase in the maximum chemical system size, up to seven million atoms. Since demand for Anton 3
will be high, our goals are focused not only on providing access but also on maximizing the value of this limited
resource to the community — recognizing that the creativity of the broad, diverse biomedical research
community is one of our most powerful resources for innovation. Anton 3 will be integrated as an NSF
ACCESS resource provider, and the accessibility and impact of Anton 3 will significantly increase by engaging
in their broadening participation, outreach, and training programs. Through these outreach efforts, researchers
at many more institutions will have the opportunity to use Anton 3, especially researchers from traditionally
underrepresented groups in biomedical research. In addition, the hundreds of long-timescale MD trajectories
researchers generate on Anton systems constitute a unique and valuable data collection that can be used to
gain additional biomedical knowledge and advance the application of machine learning protocols to augment
molecular dynamics simulations. These important datasets will be available to researchers and educators
worldwide through a web portal and co-located on the PSC’s Bridges-2 and Neocortex systems for classroom
instruction and research, including reanalysis, machine learning, and data mining.