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NCSA receives NSF funding to support cyberinfrastructure
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded $18 million over a two-year period to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The center provides advanced computing, networking, and data resources to the nation's researchers, enabling them to make breakthrough science and engineering discoveries. 
The center also provides an extensive and effective program of user support, which includes a help desk that is staffed around the clock, expert consultants, in-depth collaborations to address research challenges, and workshops and online training. NCSA's resources have supported a number of firsts, including the first simulation of an entire life form at atomic detail and the first three-dimensional simulation of turbulence through a realistic narrowed carotid artery. (To read more about the science enabled by NCSA, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/News/.) NCSA provides scientists, engineers, educators, students, and other research communities with access to more than 140 teraflops of computing power. The center deploys heterogeneous systems to support diverse research requirements. Systems available through the NSF allocation process include:
The center also provides an extensive and effective program of user support, which includes a help desk that is staffed around the clock, expert consultants, in-depth collaborations to address research challenges, and workshops and online training. NCSA's resources have supported a number of firsts, including the first simulation of an entire life form at atomic detail and the first three-dimensional simulation of turbulence through a realistic narrowed carotid artery. (To read more about the science enabled by NCSA, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/News/.) NCSA provides scientists, engineers, educators, students, and other research communities with access to more than 140 teraflops of computing power. The center deploys heterogeneous systems to support diverse research requirements. Systems available through the NSF allocation process include: - Abe, a Dell cluster capable of peak performance of 89 teraflops. This system debuted at #8 on the Top 500 List in June 2007. Abe is a shared resource, with 50 percent of its cycles available through the National Science Foundation allocation process and the remaining time allocated to serve state of Illinois and University of Illinois strategic initiatives and NCSA's partners in business and industry.
- Cobalt, an SGI Altix consisting of two 512-processor shared-memory systems. Cobalt's peak performance is 6.5 teraflops.
- Tungsten, a Dell cluster with a peak performance of 16 teraflops.
- Mercury, an IA-64 Linux cluster with a peak performance of more than 10 teraflops.
NCSA also has a 22-teraflop cluster, called T3, that is available to its business and industry partners through the center's Private Sector Program.