World's Third Fastest Computer
East Tennessee is now home to two of the world's three fastest computers, according to new rankings released recently.
The Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers places University of Tennessee supercomputer Kraken in third place, where it also holds the title of world's fastest academic supercomputer, while Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar computer took first place overall.
Kraken, the result of a $65 million grant to UT from the National Science Foundation, recently became only the fourth computer in history to perform more than 1,000 trillion calculations per second, known as a petaflop.
"Winning a $65 million NSF award put the UT among the supercomputing elite, and now we have reached the pinnacle in having the world's fastest academic supercomputer," said Jan Simek, interim UT president. "This is a phenomenal achievement and is among growing distinctions that enable us to continue attracting the best faculty and the best students we have ever had, and to make our university the best it has ever been."
The twice-yearly Top500 is published by Jack Dongarra, a UT Knoxville distinguished professor of computer science and the director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory along with colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Mannheim.
Since its creation in 2007, Kraken has been used for nearly 300 scientific projects addressing vital questions in areas from climate and weather modeling to applications in genetics and medicine.
"The beauty of Kraken is not just its computing power, but its problem-solving power," said UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. "Scientists from universities around the country, including many here at UT Knoxville, have put Kraken to use to attack humanity's most pressing problems. It is an invaluable resource to this university to be home to such a powerful asset."
With the combined computing power of UT and ORNL, East Tennessee is now firmly ensconced as a center for supercomputing activities, a fact which is continuing to draw even more scientific resources to the area, leading not only to technological.
"The University of Tennessee's Kraken supercomputer, pictured here, has been announced as the world's third most powerful computer overall, and is also the world's most powerful academic computer. It was built as part of a $65 million National Science Foundation grant, and is managed by UT's National Institute for Computational Science. (Credit: University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Laboratory)"
Source: University of Tennessee
|
