Mission

Established in 2020, the University of Southern California’s Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) provides advanced computational research support to USC students and faculty. Prior to its relaunch as CARC, USC’s High-Performance Computing Center (HPCC) had been providing computational resources since 2000.

CARC represents a collaborative, interdisciplinary partnership supported by numerous schools and departments across USC. It bridges USC’s unique strengths in scientific computing, computer science, and communications by supporting more than 100 research groups in a variety of disciplines, including epigenetics, geophysics, materials science, engineering, natural language translation, and health sciences.

When the needs of researchers exceed the capabilities of a personal computer, CARC offers its support. Examples of services offered include high-performance computing, data storage, cloud computing, secure computing for sensitive data, research computing workshops, and academic research partnerships.

In August 2020, CARC performed a major upgrade to its high-performance computing systems. The general-use Discovery cluster, the Endeavour condo cluster (part of CARC’s Condo Cluster Program), and four high-performance, parallel file systems currently form the research computing cyberinfrastructure at USC. CARC staff continue to expand these systems and develop new services and tools to support the ever-changing needs of scientific research.

See the Discovery Resource Overview, Endeavour Resource Overview, and Storage File Systems user guides for more information about the technical specifications of CARC systems.

Since its inception, the Center for Advanced Research Computing has established itself as an invaluable resource for research work at USC. Today, after a major upgrade to its systems and numerous other projects planned for the near future, CARC is poised to become an even more accessible and far-reaching part of the greater USC research community.