News Archive

Irene Qualters joined the National Science Foundation in December 2009 as a program director in the office of Cyberinfrastructure, with responsibility for the Blue Waters project. She recently talked with Access’ Barbara Jewett about Blue Waters, as well as the future of high-performance computing. You have a really extensive background in private industry—Merck, Ageia Technologies, … Continued

by J. William Bell and John Toon Electrons flowing through semiconductors are our electronic world’s lifeblood. They are pumping through your cell phone, TV, and computer, the airplane you took last week and the car you drove this morning, and, of course, supercomputers. As a result of that importance, researchers are on the lookout for … Continued

One of the most exciting research advances in science and engineering in the past decade is the digitization of observational science. Fields as disparate as astronomy, biology, and environmental science are being revolutionized by the use of digital technologies. From massive digital detectors in a new generation of telescopes to sensor arrays for characterizing ecological … Continued

The Fourth International Workshop on High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing Technology and Applications (HPRCTA 2010) will be held Nov. 14 in New Orleans in conjunction with SC10. The workshop provides a forum for computational scientists who use reconfigurable computers and technology developers to discuss progress and trends in the field. High-performance reconfigurable computing (HPRC) offers the potential … Continued

by Barbara Jewett It’s not uncommon for computational scientists to generate several terabytes of data during the course of a project. But imagine gathering up to a petabyte of data daily. How will you process that much data? Where will you store it? How will you share the data with colleagues? Those are just some … Continued

ContactsTrish Barker, NCSAtlbarker@ncsa.illinois.edu217.265.8013 Faith Singer-Villalobos, TACC, 512.232.5771Michael Schneider, PSC, 412.268.4960Scott Jones, NICS, 865.574.6944 NCSA, TACC, PSC and NICS to offer first dedicated technology insertion service for the “new” TeraGrid A team of four U.S. advanced computing centers today announced that it has begun work on the National Science Foundation (NSF) eXtreme Digital (XD) Technology Insertion … Continued

By Vince Dixon NCSA research scientist Alan Craig and colleague Kalev Leetaru have received a third patent for high-powered web tools and methods. Craig is the associate director for human computer interaction for the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science and Leetaru is a center affiliate. Their patent, “Method and System for … Continued

More than 1,000 people visited the University of Illinois’ new National Petascale Computing Facility yesterday, touring the state-of-the-art building and learning more about the supercomputers it will house. Next year, the building will be home to Blue Waters, a supercomputer capable of performing 10 quadrillion calculations every second. Scientists will use Blue Waters to better … Continued

Want to learn how to use graphics processors for scientific computing? Scale your parallel code to tens of thousands of CPU cores? Deal with ginormous datasets? The Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering offers these courses and more during its summer program for 2010. University of Illinois students will have the $100 registration fee … Continued

Check out the University’s state-of-the-art 88,000-square-foot National Petascale Computing Facility, the building that will house the Blue Waters supercomputer, at an open house from 4 to 6 p.m. on June 17. Take a tour and learn more about the building’s energy-efficient features and about Blue Waters, which will be the most powerful supercomputer in the … Continued

By Barbara Jewett The climate is changing. Global temperatures have been increasing for over 40 years, and the science indicates this is primarily due to human activities. The good news, according to climate model results using NCSA resources, is this change can be slowed down before the impacts become too large. Sections of the country … Continued

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is hiring undergraduate students for summer 2010 to work with researchers and educators as part of the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Undergraduate students from multiples disciplines—including chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering, and education—will have the opportunity to actively participate in research conducted by … Continued

by J. William Bell The northern reaches of the San Andreas Fault have seen their share of major earthquakes in the last century. The 1906 San Francisco killed more than 3,000 people, and a 1989 quake near Santa Cruz postponed the World Series. The other end of the fault near Los Angeles, meanwhile, hasn’t seen … Continued

Petascale Computing Resource Allocations (PRAC awards) from theNational Science Foundation allow research teams to work closely with theBlue Waters project team in preparing their codes. The codes and projectsaddress key challenges faced by our society and explore fundamentalscientific and engineering problems. These multiyear collaborations include help porting andre-engineering existing applications. In some cases, the teams … Continued