Research time on System X, the 2200 processor supercomputer at the Virginia Tech Terascale Computing Facility (TCF), is now available on a cost-recovery basis to computational science and engineering researchers. System X is currently rated the world's fastest academic supercomputer.

Researchers who have funding for computational time can take advantage of an aggressive rate structure for additional hours on System X. "After a two-month friendly-user period, System X is now available to the wider high performance computer-user community," said Calvin Ribbens, associate professor of computer science in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering and deputy director of the facility.

Allocation requests will be judged on scientific merit by a committee of faculty members. Internally-funded allocations will be available to Virginia Tech researchers doing exploratory research. "Researchers will be asked to submit proposals at three levels, ranging from less than 10,000 to more than 100,000 cpu-hours," Ribbens said.

"Our goal with System X was to lower the barriers of access for a computational resource of this size," said Srinidhi Varadarajan, assistant professor of computer science and director of the facility. With more than 12.25 teraflops of sustained Linpack performance, System X is the largest academic computing resource in the world as of the November 2004 TOP500 List (http://www.top500.org).

More information can be found at the Terascale Computing Facility's website, http://www.tcf.vt.edu/.

Share this story