EXPANSE2 Cooperative Agreement Summary

The University of California, San Diego received a $10 million Cooperative Agreement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070), effective June 1, 2026 through May 31, 2028. Under this award, UCSD's San Diego Supercomputer Center acquires and deploys EXPANSE2, a multi-petaflop/s supercomputer system designed to replace the original EXPANSE system and serve as a national cyberinfrastructure resource. EXPANSE2 features advanced processors, accelerators, and Ethernet-based networking optimized for data-intensive research workloads and supports critical national research priorities including electronic chip design automation, artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery and digital agriculture applications, fusion energy research, and open inference models.

EXPANSE2 extends beyond physical hardware capabilities to deliver comprehensive advanced cyberinfrastructure support for the "long tail of science"—a broad cross-section of researchers and institutions across diverse scientific disciplines. The system provides enhanced batch-oriented computing and science gateway capabilities, integrated artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) frameworks and libraries, support for data-intensive analysis at scale, and user-friendly allocation and scheduling policies. The platform incorporates innovations in system software, AI/ML operations, and support services, while enabling rapid application development through Jupyter Notebooks and connecting researchers to federated and extensible data ecosystems, positioning EXPANSE2 as an integral component of the national cyberinfrastructure ecosystem.