Research Computing

Stanford is outlining the different infrastructures for artificial intelligence computing because being able to identify and measure AI workloads is central to how Stanford is approaching emissions accounting, infrastructure planning, and sustainable AI adoption.

On Campus Research Computing

Stanford Research Computing provides shared high-performance computing resources that support researchers across many disciplines, including artificial intelligence, engineering, medicine, climate science, biology, and the physical sciences. Systems such as Sherlock and Marlowe enable researchers to solve computational problems that would be impractical on individual workstations while providing expert support, consulting, and access to specialized computing resources. 

Why does Stanford have shared research computing?

Operating shared research computing infrastructure allows Stanford to:

• Support world-class research with advanced computing resources available to researchers across the university.
• Improve resource efficiency by sharing computing infrastructure across hundreds of research groups rather than relying on many independent systems.
• Integrate sustainability into infrastructure planning, including energy procurement, cooling systems, and future facility design.
• Measure operational impacts, including electricity use, cooling demand, and other resource consumption to inform emissions accounting and long-term planning.
• Provide expert guidance to help researchers select appropriate computing resources and improve the efficiency of computational workflows.

A Living Laboratory for Sustainable Computing

Stanford is also exploring new approaches to make research computing more sustainable. Current efforts include developing methods to estimate the energy and greenhouse gas impacts of computational workloads and evaluating opportunities for carbon-aware scheduling, which could allow flexible computing jobs to run when electricity has a lower carbon intensity. These efforts aim to provide researchers with better information about the environmental impacts of their computing while identifying opportunities to reduce emissions without compromising research outcomes.

By combining shared infrastructure, operational expertise, and ongoing research into sustainable computing, Stanford is working to support scientific discovery while reducing the environmental impacts of advanced computing.

Living Lab Story