What is MASSIVE?

MASSIVE is a data processing engine for Australian science and it empowers researchers to unlock impactful research discoveries within scientific data.

MASSIVE is an ISO quality-accredited, high-performance data processing facility that provides access to data processing capacity at the scale required to make impactful research discoveries. By building strong partnerships with research communities, MASSIVE aims to underpin a wide range of researchers, including experimental and wet laboratory scientists who are capturing and analysing ever-increasing amounts of data.

MASSIVE supports more than 3,000 researchers from over 100 institutions nationwide. The capabilities offered by MASSIVE are accessible to all Australian researchers through partnership, and also via:

  • merit allocation through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme.

  • integration with national instruments based in various institutions, and

  • through national informatics infrastructure projects, including the Characterisation Virtual Laboratory (CVL).

MASSIVE has a commitment to ensure quality, fairness and consistency in its operations, and reflecting this commitment, the facility is accredited to the ISO9001 quality standard.

MASSIVE provides researchers with the computing resources and tools to apply high-throughput parallel processing and deep learning techniques to solve a broader variety of difficult research questions, and allows researchers to more effectively extract knowledge from scientific data. The impact of the science performed using MASSIVE is broad, and includes basic discoveries in the biological, medical, computational, engineering and environmental areas.

MASSIVE Partners

Partners

  • Monash University

  • University of Wollongong

Affiliate Partners

  • ARC Centre of Excellence for Advanced Molecular Imaging (Imaging CoE)

  • ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Cryo-electron Microscopy of Membrane Proteins (CCEMMP)

Hardware

MASSIVE runs M3 (5,000+ cores, 168 NVIDIA coprocessors, 3PB+3PB fast parallel file systems), which was purchased in 2016 and upgraded yearly through Monash University capital investment. MASSIVE also operates the CVL.

More information is available on the M3 documentation website.

Governance

The Steering Committee is composed of the MASSIVE Partners, Affiliated Partners and independent members.

It is chaired by an independent member, Dr Greg Storr.

Steering Committee Members

  • Dr Greg Storr, Independent Chair

  • Dr Miles Apperley, ANSTO

  • Prof Paul Bonnington, Monash University

  • Prof Gary Egan, ARC CoE for Integrative Brain Function

  • Prof Antoine van Oijen, University of Wollongong

  • Prof James Whisstock, ARC CoE for Advanced Molecular Imaging

  • Prof Wojtek James Goscinski, Coordinator, MASSIVE Ex-officio

  • Ms Gin Tan, Architect, Monash eResearch Centre Ex-officio