LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The University of Louisville and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the delivery of a new supercomputer—the most powerful academic high performance computing system in Kentucky—on the university’s Belknap campus.
UofL will use the computer to help solve complex research problems in areas such as cancer research, materials science, atmospheric modeling, visualization and bioinformatics.
The supercomputer, nicknamed the Cardinal Research Cluster (CRC), has a peak speed of more than 25 teraflops (trillion calculations per second), roughly 1,100 times faster than today’s average desktop computer. When fully operational, the system is expected to rank among the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.
UofL’s Information Technology team and IBM technicians “powered up” the system in late January and expect it to be in full operation by late March.
“As a premier metropolitan research university, it’s important that we have the best support for our faculty, students and staff,” said UofL President James Ramsey. “We have phenomenal research taking place here in health sciences and other areas. This supercomputer will help us take our research to the next level.”
UofL’s decision to buy the supercomputer was a joint effort of its research and information technology units. To make sure the computer would meet present and future needs of the university, more than a dozen UofL researchers collaborated during the selection and installation process.
“This computer infrastructure represents leading edge technology,” said Priscilla Hancock, UofL’s vice president for information technology and chief information officer. “For the first time in UofL history, it consolidates our research data, giving us the computing environment we need to work more collaboratively.”
“The CRC represents a significant boost in computational power at UofL where researchers are tackling some of science’s most challenging questions,” said Dave Turek, IBM’s vice president of deep computing. “Designed to meet varying demands across a number of academic disciplines, the IBM system will enable researchers to work on larger, more complex problems to help improve the quality of life for many in the years to come.”
UofL’s CRC is an IBM iDataPlex cluster-style supercomputer with 100 terabytes of usable space and 5.2 terabytes of memory.