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OCTOBER 2000

FSU'S NEW COMPUTER IS MOST POWERFUL ON ANY CAMPUS

One immortal person with a calculator would need 2 million years to do 2.5 trillion calculations. FSU's new computer can do that many in one second.

The new computer, an $8 million IBM system, is the most powerful supercomputer owned by any single university.

"This kind of herculean computational power will help our top-notch researchers make new scientific breakthroughs," said FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte. "This system puts FSU at the forefront of high performance computing and will help our students and faculty become leaders in computational research."

Among other projects, FSU researchers will use the supercomputer to predict hurricanes and other weather changes; compare DNA sequences as complex as those of the human genome; create artificially intelligent, environmentally adaptive computers and robots; schedule and manage air and telecommunications traffic; predict financial/commodity markets and develop risk mitigation strategies.

FSU professor T.N. Krishnamurti, an internationally recognized tropical meteorologist who developed the Super Ensemble hurricane forecasting method, has been guaranteed full use of the supercomputer during major hurricanes.

"This supercomputer will place FSU well above any other university in the world when it comes to providing its students and faculty the latest, most effective and powerful means of scientific and computer research," Gov. Jeb Bush said when the computer was announced in August. "The people of Florida and the entire nation will benefit from the research being done here."

The system will allow the new interdisciplinary School of Computational Science and Information Technology (CSIT) to meet its ambitious education and research goals, said Yousuff Hussaini, director of CSIT.

"Our goals are to bring about revolutionary advances in research through state-of-the-art high performance computing and to train next-generation researchers in skills that integrate advanced computing and information technology with specific science, engineering and liberal arts disciplines," Hussaini said.

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CSIT, established in the fall of 1999, offers high-level interdisciplinary courses to train students to use computationally intensive methods in their research. The school is focusing its research on six disciplines: computing sciences, basic sciences, biology, climate dynamics, hydrology and materials science.

"We see significant economic implications in this initiative," said Lawrence G. Abele, provost and vice president for academic affairs. "More and more complex social and scientific problems are being solved through the use of computationally intensive methods. The education of students, trained in the development and use of these methods, addresses a major workforce need of our society."

Larry Conrad, assistant vice president for technology integration, said the decision to buy the IBM supercomputer was based in part on the opportunity for multiyear partnership and collaboration with IBM Research. FSU awarded the contract in May.

"The unmatched power and scalability of the RS/6000 SP supercomputer will enable the university to tackle numerous scientific endeavors," said Steven Evans, vice president, IBM Global Education Industry unit.

Powered by IBM-pioneered copper microprocessors, the system is located at the Bernard Sliger Building at Innovation Park in Tallahassee. The initial configuration of 168 processors was installed in July, and 512 processors will be added by 2002 to complete the system.

The current installation ranks FSU as having the top university supercomputing capability in the United States. After the upgrade to the system in 2002, FSU will rank No. 1 worldwide among university sites, based on those currently registered with the Top 500, a list compiled by the University of Tennessee and the University of Mannheim in Germany.

The system not only will be fast; it also will have tremendous storage capacity - enough disk and tape space to store more than five times the number of cataloged books in the Library of Congress.

- Jill Elish