USC’s Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) houses the nation’s sixth fastest supercomputer in an academic setting, according to TOP500 Supercomputer Sites, which ranks the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world.

This fall, USC’s supercomputer cluster achieved a benchmark of 72.05 teraflops, or 72.05 trillion floating-point calculations per second, on its 1,280-node, 10-gigabit-backbone cluster, placing it sixth in the nation among academic supercomputers, 19th in the world among academic supercomputers and 71st in the world among all supercomputers.

The new ranking for USC’s supercomputer represents a rise from last spring’s rankings, when the supercomputer achieved a benchmark of 51.41 teraflops and earned the rank of seventh among academic supercomputers in the United States and 76th among all supercomputers in the world.

“Recent advances in high-performance computing have set computational science on an equal footing with other methods of scientific inquiry, such as experimentation and theoretical investigation,” said Priya Vashishta, faculty executive director of USC’s High-Performance Computing and Communications. “To tackle the most challenging science and engineering questions, researchers increasingly rely on the powerful computing resources, massive data storage, visualization environments and software that HPPC provides.”

Vashishta is a professor of chemical engineering, materials science and computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and a professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at USC College.

“USC faculty and student researchers are particularly fortunate to have a high-performance computing facility that ranks so highly among the world’s supercomputers,” he said. “As they learn how to use HPCC’s resources, they develop the 21st-century skills necessary to become global leaders in advanced technologies and critical scientific discoveries.”