On Friday, the TACC, located at The University of Texas at Austin's Pickle Research Campus in North Austin, dedicated the first phase of Stampede2, the most powerful supercomputer at any U.S. university and the 12th fastest in the world.
TACC executive director, Dan Stanzione, stands in front of Stampede2.[/caption]"Stampede2 represents a new horizon for academic researchers in the U.S.," TACC Executive Director Dan Stanzione said. "It will serve many thousands of our nation's scientists and engineers, allowing them to improve our competitiveness and ensure that UT Austin remains a leader in computational research for the national open science community."
Phase one of Stampede2 has two-thirds of the final capacity of the supercomputer. TACC will add another processor to it in the fall, according to Stanzione.
Stampede2 supersedes TACC’s supercomputer Stampede. It doubles the peak performance, memory, storage capacity and bandwidth of its predecessor, while occupying half the physical size and consuming half the power, according to a news release from TACC.
The new supercomputer was integrated into TACC's ecosystem of more than 15 advanced computing systems, providing access to long-term storage, scientific visualization, machine learning and cloud computing capabilities.
TACC originally created Stampede with funding from the National Science Foundation in 2012 by winning a competition with a proposal. The organization applied to renew its award in 2015 and was awarded funds for Stampede2 in 2016.
The National Science Foundation has given TACC—along with its partners, Intel Corp. and Dell Inc.—$30 million to produce the supercomputer and will give the organization another $24 million to operate it until 2021.
TACC intends for the supercomputer to be a national resource, used by over 600 different institutions.
What do supercomputers like Stampede2 do?
As the research computing arm of UT, TACC uses supercomputers to provide large-scale simulations and solve problems that a regular desktop or laptop can't compute, Stanzione said.
“Our job is to take the best computer technologies we can come up with and apply it to doing all the other kinds of science and engineering that use computation,” he said.
Stampede2 in particular will be the equivalent of 100,000 regular laptops after phase two, according to Stanzione. So a supercomputer can do in a day what a laptop could do in about 100,000 days—or about 300 years.
Stanzione said supercomputers give scientists a greater capacity to complete complex tasks and more capabilities.
Visualization of two black holes colliding, and the resulting gravitational waves generated, based on simulations of the event detection from the LIGO experiment announced in February 2015.[/caption]They are also useful for creating simulations for experiments impossible to complete in real life. For example, Stanzione said Stampede2 helps scientists run simulations of black holes colliding—an experiment that’s not only incredibly expensive, but could also destroy the planet.
Since May, Stampede2 has already been used by several researchers throughout the U.S., according to the news release.
Stephen Hawking’s team from Cambridge University used Stampede2 to study gravitational waves, and biochemist Rommie Amaro from University of California-San Diego created molecular simulations of biological systems.
UT data scientist George Biros has analyzed brain cancer with the supercomputer.
Stampede2’s impact on Austin and beyond
Having Stampede2 and its research team makes UT an attractive destination for researchers in all science fields, Stanzione said. It also helps UT retain research funding, and top faculty and researchers on staff.
“There’s no coincidence that Austin has a great university and is a great tech town,” Stanzione said. “Being a leader in computation helps us be a leader in research at UT which helps us grow the technology base and impact in Austin.”
Stampede2’s effect doesn’t stop at the city limits, however.
Advancement in virtually every science field comes through computation, Stanzione said. Supercomputers help advance electronics, climatology and health care.
“Almost every product you use, medicine you will take and disease treatments you will receive derive from our ability to do better computation in some way or another,” Stanzione said. “If you’re interested in the advancement of the human condition, you’re interested in this.”
