National Petascale Computing Facility

The University of Illinois' state-of-the-art 88,000-square-foot National Petascale Computing Facility (NPCF), 1725 S. Oak St., Champaign, houses computing, networking, and data systems that benefit researchers at Illinois and across the country.

• Offers top-flight physical and cybersecurity, including monitoring of all exit bandwidth, deep packet inspection, and tracking of network flows. All equipment in the facility must comply with cybersecurity and operational standards.
• Takes advantage of the campus' highly reliable electrical supply, chilled water distribution system and thermal storage.
• Has a limited UPS system for NCSA's mass storage system and other selected equipment.
• Provides 1 or 10 gigabit high-performance Ethernet connections as required with up to 300 gigabit external network.
• Achieved Gold Certification in the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which is the recognized standard for measuring sustainability in construction.
• Uses three on-site cooling towers to provide water chilled by Mother Nature a large part of the year, reducing the amount of chilled water the building draws from the campus chilled water loop.
• Reduces power conversion losses by running 480 volt AC power to compute systems.
• Operates continually at the high end of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers standards, meaning the data center will not be overcooled. Equipment must be able to operate with a 65°F inlet water temperature and a 78°F inlet air temperature.