Information for Illinois Researchers

The Blue Waters supercomputer will be an outstanding asset for researchers across the United States, including those at the University of Illinois. In fact, 7 percent of the Blue Waters supercomputer is reserved exclusively for Illinois faculty, staff, and students. This allocation is equivalent to 900 teraflops, an order of magnitude more capacity than is currently available at any U.S. university. A campus-wide committee will review and make recommendations on proposals for the use of Blue Waters.

Illinois faculty also can submit proposals to the National Science Foundation for Petascale Computing Resource Allocations (PRACs). This is the competitive, peer-reviewed process by which time on Blue Waters is allocated; there is no charge for researchers to use cycles allocated through the PRAC process. Several Illinois researchers are leading PRAC projects:

Beckman Institute biophysicist Klaus Schulten refers to his work as "the computational microscope"; just as light microscopes gave scientists the first glimpse of cells, today computational methods can provide even more fine-grained look at the dynamic basics of life. With Blue Waters, Schulten's team will be able to examine biomolecular processes for longer time scales; the "holy grail" of a full millisecond may be within reach.
(Read more: Powering new discoveries)

Illinois atmospheric scientists Bob Wilhelmson and Brian Jewett, and collaborators from other institutions, will use Blue Waters to simulate tornadoes with much greater resolution and fidelity. They hope to learn what small-scale features cause thunderstorms to spawn twisters, which could lead to better and more timely storm warnings.
(Read more: When tornadoes attack)

Don Wuebbles has spent most of the past 40 years studying atmospheric chemistry and physical processes and their effect on climate. He'll continue this work, with Illinois collaborator Xin-Zhong Liang, on Blue Waters.
(Read more: A cooler path)

Many faculty and staff from across campus have been involved with the Blue Waters project for years, from developing the proposal to deploying the machine:

William Gropp, the Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science, is a co-principal investigator for Blue Waters and is the Chief Applications Architect for the project.
(Read more: A better understanding)

Wen-mei Hwu, the Sanders-AMD Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is a co-principal investigator for Blue Waters and is the Chief Hardware Architect for the project.
(Read more: The best things constantly change)

Marc Snir, the Michael Faiman and Saburo Muroga Professor of Computer Science, is a co-principal investigator for Blue Waters and is the Chief Software Architect for the project.
(Read more: The best things constantly change)

Laxmikant Kale, a professor of computer science and leader of the Illinois Parallel Programming Laboratory, is involved with simulating application performance on Blue Waters and is implementing a new programming model, embodied in Charm++ and Adaptive MPI, for the supercomputer.
(Read more: Tuning up applications)