ACADEMIA

On September 29, 2005, construction began on a three-story, 94,000-square-foot home for the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the Jackson School of Geosciences' Institute for Geophysics (UTIG). The facility will provide new offices and a state-of-the-art computer machine room for TACC, and will bring UTIG on the university campus for the first time since its inception in 1972. Both TACC and UTIG support and conduct leading scientific research for The University of Texas at Austin and to the national academic research communities in their areas of expertise. The new building will allow the TACC and UTIG research staffs to flourish in their commitments to carry out pioneering research at the highest academic standards. The two research units, which already work closely together, anticipate stronger collaborations with each other and with the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) as they help the university compete for federal research and development funds. Architect's renderings of the new home for the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the Jackson School of Geosciences' Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) on The University of Texas at Austin's J.J. Pickle Research Campus. TACC is one of the leading advanced computing centers in the United States, serving researchers in Texas and across the nation. As demand for supercomputing has increased, TACC has grown from a staff of 15 to more than 60 people in four years, and that number is expected to double to 120 over the next four years. The new building will offer room for further expansion as TACC researchers continue to evolve projects like TeraGrid, the world's largest cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research. "More than ever, research and development in academia and industry is increasingly dependent on the capabilities of advanced computing resources and software to develop models, run simulations, analyze data, and transform information into knowledge," says Dr. Jay Boisseau, director of TACC. "TACC's tremendous growth has resulted from our excellent staff being able to help researchers meet those needs, while also conducting research into technologies that make advanced computing resources even more powerful. This new building will enable us to continue to grow and thereby increase our ability to help UT researchers' move to and remain at the forefront of their research disciplines." Currently, TACC compute, visualization, storage, network and IT resources are located in a 3,800 square foot machine room in the Commons Building at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus. This machine room houses more than 90 systems, ranging in size from dual-processor workstations supporting IT services to a 1024 processor compute cluster. The new building will boast a 6,000 square foot, raised-floor computer machine room that can be expanded to 12,000 square feet. It will accommodate all existing infrastructure with room to grow and will feature two long glass walls so visitors can view the variety of powerful computing systems in deployment. A new scientific visualization laboratory is also a future expansion option. "We continue to grow in terms of full time staff, computing power, and support infrastructure," says Janet McCord, TACC's assistant director. "The new building will make it possible to employ more students, which is something we've wanted to do for some time. Exposing students to computing technologies is integral to the TACC mission." More than 600 active, funded research projects are currently benefiting from the high performance computing resources available at TACC. These projects, each led by a faculty member or senior researcher and conducted by a research team, encompass many disciplines including the natural sciences (chemistry, physics, computer science, geosciences), engineering (biomedical, mechanical, petroleum, aerospace), and business (economic modeling). Sharing this new building with UTIG will foster new research and development in the field of computational geosciences as UTIG will gain ready access to TACC's computing systems. Researchers at the institute study processes shaping the earth's structure and environment, including sea-level fluctuations, climate change and geologic hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. They also develop new mathematical techniques for data processing and imaging, research that relies on high-end computation. The building will be located in the northeast quadrant of the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, adjacent to the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG). Construction is expected to be complete by fall 2006.