The Matrix
Research on computer architectures and graphics has typically been conducted separately from neuroscience, missing an opportunity to inform and constrain the development of new hardware systems and tools specifically designed to advance understanding of cognition.
The Wu Tsai Institute’s experimental computing and visualization shared research facility, operated by the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence, bridges this gap by bringing together computer scientists and engineers with neuroscientists in a shared space that supports the development and use by researchers of new computing and visualization technologies.
The Matrix is located on the eleventh floor of 100 College Street. Its open design and collaborative space welcomes faculty, postdocs, and students, and provides a shared, hands-on research environment designed to support visualization, prototyping, and experimental computing. The facility comprises three complementary spaces: a visualization space, a makerspace, and an experimental server room.
The visualization facility enables researchers to explore complex data at scale through three 2×2 tiled 4K display walls, a dedicated high-performance visualization server with two NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPUs, and three VR/XR headsets. It supports real-time data display, immersive visualization, and interactive application development using a wide range of visualization and development software. The adjacent makerspace provides resources for turning ideas into working prototypes. Researchers can use 3D printers, electronic test and measurement equipment, soldering stations, and prototyping supplies to build, test, and refine custom research hardware.
The experimental server room provides a flexible testbed for evaluating emerging computing technologies. Its cluster includes a range of NVIDIA GPUs and FPGA hardware, enabling researchers to experiment with new hardware, software, and system configurations before broader deployment. Large-scale analysis and modeling are supported by the Misha GPU cluster at the Yale Center for Research Computing.
