U of I's NCSA to vie for next-generation supercomputer

NSF wants machine with 1-2 petaflops of computing power

Monday, October 9, 2006

URBANA (AP) - In a rapidly changing world where megabytes and gigabytes simply aren't enough anymore, scientists are preparing for the next generation of supercomputers - machines that can make quadrillions of computations per second.

Called petascale, these new computers will help scientists go where no one has gone before to look deeper into the building blocks of life, investigate the most perplexing mysteries of the universe or determine the effects of global warming on perhaps a single county in the Corn Belt.

And the University of Illinois - the first university to build its own computer, ILLIAC, back in 1952 - wants to have one.

"Illinois is about building unique tools and instruments so that we can advance science and engineering in a way that nobody else can," said Wen-Mei Hwu, a professor of computer and electrical engineering.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the university's Urbana campus is competing for National Science Foundation funding to acquire and deploy a supercomputer that can sustain between one and two petaflops of computational power, said Thom Dunning, the center's director.

"NSF is really looking for a machine that has the potential to impact a huge number of science and engineering areas as opposed to just a very select set," he said.

One petaflop represents one quadrillion computations per second, a one-thousand-fold increase over the teraflop, one trillion computations per second, the measure used for most current supercomputers.

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On the Net: www.ncsa.uiuc.edu