Oak Ridge Supercomputer

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is taking applications from the scientific community from researchers hoping to use one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

This fall, the laboratory finished installing hardware to quintuple its supercomputing capability, making it the fastest non-classified computer in the world. The Oak Ridge computer now operates at a speed of 50-trillion calculations per second, or 50 teraflops.

Thomas Zacharia directs the supercomputer project for Oak Ridge. He says its sheer computing power is impressive, but even more exciting is its potential value to the scientific community.

“We are at the cusp of where these computers are powerful enough to make fundamental new discoveries that could not have been possible in things like superconductivity-investigating superconductivity in materials, or magnetism in materials, looking at new compounds, new materials that could be developed for specific applications. And I’m sure that it has the same impact in biotechnology and drug discovery, as well.”

The computer is currently in limited use as Zacharia’s team works out the kinks and makes sure the lab’s electric supply is adequate for full-scale operations.

Starting in January, researchers will be able access to the Oak Ridge equipment in order to test models and theories based on complex calculations. Zacharia says institutions that have close relationships with the laboratory, such as the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University, will be given priority.

Once everything is up and running, Zacharia will return to the job of adding computing capability. Oak Ridge officials hope to reach the 1-thousand teraflop mark by 2014.