Illinois Petascale Computing Facility

The state-of-the-art 88,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility is under construction at the corner of Oak Street and St. Mary's Road on the University of Illinois' south campus to house Blue Waters and other NCSA infrastructure, as well as nearly 40 staff members. The facility includes a 20,000-square-foot data center with an additional 10,000 square feet of raised floor for other infrastructure. It will be large enough to simultaneously accommodate both the initial system and a follow-on system. It will combine top-flight physical and cybersecurity with the open, collaborative research attitudes of a public institution.

"We're committed to ensuring that researchers, educators, and students all have access to this extraordinary resource," says NCSA Director Thom Dunning. "NCSA has pursued this philosophy of open access for more than 21 years, and has provided computing power to thousands of people across the country, while still maintaining high standards for security."

Energy efficiency is an integral part of the Blue Waters project and the Petascale Computing Facility. The facility will:

• Achieve LEED Silver certification, with LEED Gold as the goal.
• Rely heavily on more efficient water cooling for the systems it houses.
• Take advantage of an on-site tower to chill water for cooling the compute systems. This will reduce energy consumption by using the outside air to chill water during the cold winter months.
• Take advantage of the campus' highly reliable electricity supply, avoiding the need for the standard back-up Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). Eliminating the UPS saves equipment costs, minimizes floor space used, and increases energy efficiency because systems that employ a UPS convert AC to DC and back, incurring substantial energy losses.

The project budget for the Petascale Computing Facility is $72.5 million, with $60 million provided by the state of Illinois and the remainder coming from the University of Illinois.

The facility will be completed in 2010.