On Thursday, March 28, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the National Science Foundation, and distinguished guests celebrated the launch of the Blue Waters supercomputer into full production, meaning the behemoth capable of performing quadrillions of calculations every second and working with quadrillions of bytes of data is now crunching numbers around the clock to help scientists and engineers across the country tackle a wide variety of science and engineering challenges.
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On Thursday, March 28, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the National Science Foundation, and distinguished guests celebrated the launch of the Blue Waters supercomputer into full production, meaning the behemoth capable of performing quadrillions of calculations every second and working with quadrillions of bytes of data is now crunching numbers around the clock to help scientists and engineers across the country tackle a wide variety of science and engineering challenges.
Because Blue Waters is among the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and is the most powerful supercomputer on a university campus, it enables scientists to carry out research that would be otherwise impossible. The supercomputer, which was built from Cray hardware, operates at a sustained performance of more than 1 petaflop (1 quadrillion calculations per second) and is capable of peak performance of 11.61 petaflops (11.6 quadrillion calculations per second).
Speaking during the launch celebration was Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn; U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, a member of the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology; Cora Marrett, acting director of the National Science Foundation; University of Illinois President Robert Easter and Chancellor Phyllis Wise; Cray CEO Pet Ungaro; and other guests.
To mark Blue Waters’ move to full operations, several scientists launched simulation jobs on Blue Waters, demonstrating how the touch of a keyboard or even a tablet or phone allows them to interact with the supercomputer and begin complex research studies:
Steven Gottlieb, high-energy/sub-atomic physics, Indiana University
James Kinter and Cristiana Stan, atmospheric science, George Mason University
Brian O’Shea, astrophysics, Michigan State University
Klaus Schulten, biophysics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Trish Barker, public affairs coordinator, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 217/265-8013 (office), 217/390-3593 (mobile).
Lisa-Joy Zgorski, public affairs specialist, National Science Foundation, 703/292-8311.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.