More than 1,000 people visited the University of Illinois' new National Petascale Computing Facility yesterday, touring the state-of-the-art building and learning more about the supercomputers it will house. Next year, the building will be home to Blue Waters, a supercomputer capable of performing 10 quadrillion calculations every second. Scientists will use Blue Waters to better understand a wide range of phenomena, from the formation of tornadoes to the complex workings of cells in our body.

Thanks to all those in the community who turned out! You can learn more about the building and Blue Waters online:

National Petascale Computing Facility:
www.ncsa.illinois.edu/AboutUs/Facilities/npcf.html

Blue Waters:
www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/

How scientists will use Blue Waters:
www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/sci-eng.html

IBM POWER7 hardware:
www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/system.html

IBM 780 interim hardware:
www.ncsa.illinois.edu/BlueWaters/system.html

If you would like to visit the National Petascale Computing Facility, or if you would like to see NCSA's three current supercomputers and our 3D scientific visualizations, just fill out a short online form to request a tour for your group: www.ncsa.illinois.edu/AboutUs/tour.html.