New NSF funded terascale supercomputer on the drawing board

Washington 03 Feb 00 Within a year the first components of an eventual new terascale supercomputer funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) should be finished. The completed system will perform up to five trillion operations per second.

Scientists and engineers across the U.S. will benefit from the computer's ability to execute massive calculations.

The Terascale project responds to guidance from the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, which recommended such a facility as essential "if the U.S. is to continue as the world leader in basic research." In addition to supporting scientific and engineering researchers, the Terascale system will itself be a research project for the nation's top computer scientists. The project's complexity requires fundamental research in computer science related to hardware (processor, memory, storage) and software (operating system, programming tools, applications).

The NSF budget for FY 2000 includes $36 million for the first components, to be awarded this fall.

Ad Emmen

[News on Advanced IT] [Calendar] [Analysis] [IT in Medicine]