Education Policy, Business and Technology

U Texas Austin Wrangles Next-Gen Petascale Supercomputer

Campus Technology: The University of Texas at Austin recently introduced its newest supercomputer. Stampede2, as it's called, is intended to serve as the flagship at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and will be available to tens of thousands of researchers across the country.

When it's in full production this fall, the supercomputer will be able to sustain 18 petaflops of processing power — 18 quadrillion mathematical operations per second — more than twice the overall performance of the current system in terms of compute capability, storage capacity and network bandwidth. At the same time Stampede2 will consume only half as much power and take up just half the physical space of its predecessor. Cooling is provided by a chilled water system that's more cost- and energy-efficient than a standard air-conditioned approach.

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