Clemson supercomputing power ranks 62nd among sites in the world

Clemson University has made its first appearance on the list of the top 500 supercomputing sites in the world, debuting at number 62. The 31st edition of the TOP500 list was released Wednesday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany. Since 1993, the list has been produced twice a year and is the most extensive survey of trends and changes in the global supercomputing arena. “Clemson is on the move in a big way,” said Jim Bottum, Clemson’s vice provost and chief information officer. “In a very short period of time we have moved from outside the top 500 computing sites in the world to solidly within the top 75. That is tremendous progress toward Clemson's goal of becoming a top 20 public university; but even more important is how this enables and empowers our faculty, students and staff to conduct competitive, engaging and collaborative work in a global environment.” Bottum said he was brought to Clemson to build a world-class cyberinfrastructure for education, research and service. However, he maintains that enabling learning and discovery is more than just offering compute cycles; it requires creating a collaborative environment where IT specialists work in partnership with faculty and students to create an advanced cyberinfrastructure that serves the needs of a multi-disciplinary set of programs. The Palmetto Cluster, for which Clemson is ranked 62nd, is an example of the collaborative partnerships driving Clemson’s progress. It also enables research and other computationally intense work that could not be done prior to the development of the system. “This ranking recognizes Clemson’s new role as a leader in campus-based high-performance computing systems," said Jim Pepin, Clemson’s chief technology officer. "Plus, our academic community is now equipped to compete for and win contracts and grants that were previously out of reach.”