The Value Proposition of Campus High-Performance Computing Facilities to Institutional Productivity - A Production Function Model
Abstract
High-performance computing (HPC) is used by higher education institutions, industry, and research labs around the world for modeling, simulation, and data analysis to enable scientific discovery. In higher education, HPC resources are critical to attract top faculty, fulfill their obligations to sponsors, remain competitive for research funding, and train students in cutting-edge research methods. However, the operation of a high-performance computing center comes with significant operating and capital costs. While some previous attempts have been made to explore the return on investment (ROI) of investment in HPC, the academic cyberinfrastructure community lacks a well-tested model with which an institution of higher education may analyze its own investments in HPC facilities and measure if it is meeting its own stated goals.To create such a model, the research for this dissertation answered the question if investment in campus HPC facilities leads to measurable impact on institutional outputs. To do so, an analysis of a set of value metrics collected from Purdue University will be performed to measure the ROI of the institution’s investment in HPC facilities, and an application of a production function to create a model that will measure the HPC facility investment’s impact on the financial, academic, and reputational outputs of the institution.In the case of Purdue University, the completed model demonstrated a strong predictive power of institutional outputs based on investments of labor and capital supporting the campus cyberinfrastructure.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Springer, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Higher education|Computer science|Education|Finance|Labor economics
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