HyperGator Evolution & Infrastructure - HyperGator started in 2012, with expansions in 2013 and a third generation in 2020, including the first super pod A100 at an academic institution [2] - The fourth generation HyperGator was created in 2025, featuring new nodes and DDN storage, with orange storage for capacity and blue storage for high performance [3] - The new fourth generation blue storage is highlighted for its capabilities [4] - The file system is 118% petabytes all flash storage, with two X3 servers for metadata and three X2 and 12 storage trays [11] DDN Storage & Performance - DDN storage was chosen for its high performance, throughput, and ability to handle random IO for various applications like gene sequencing, energy simulation, and weather simulation [4][5] - The system features high peak and sustained performance, supporting 60,000 CPU cores and 1,100 GPU cards [6] - Exascaler's data on metadata feature is heavily relied upon, providing immediate data for files less than 64K [8][9] - The fourth generation blue storage achieved 944 kilops with a score of 273 in the IO500 benchmark using the 10 client challenge [11] University of Florida's AI Initiatives & Impact - The University of Florida is recognized as an AI University in partnership with Nvidia [2] - HyperGator supports diverse research areas including digital twin research, generative AI, robotics, and machine learning [14] - In the past semester, 42 courses were taught to 1,800 students, with approximately 1,000 HyperGator sponsors and 7,000 active users [15][16] - HyperGator supports $85 million in research portfolio, demonstrating a reasonable return on investment [17]