INDUSTRY

LSU has announced its plans for a new supercomputer called Tezpur, which will advance the university’s standing into the top-tier high-performance computing environment. It will be one of the most powerful supercomputers owned by any university in the nation and will be one of the top 50 most powerful supercomputers in the world. With more than 15 teraflops of capacity, Tezpur will outperform LSU’s SuperMike, and provide nearly three times SuperMike’s computational speed. The new commodity linux cluster will be called Tezpur – named for one of the world’s hottest peppers – and the platform will be true to its namesake. Tezpur will consist of a Linux Intel Cluster built by Dell Inc. that will deliver more than 11 million hours of computational resources and be capable of performing approximately 15 trillion numerical operations per second. “Today, LSU steps further onto the forefront of the national stage, solidifying its place as a real supercomputing power. The presence of this kind of resource sets LSU into the rarest of company when it comes to the enablement of research and teaching using the latest and most powerful tools information technology has to offer. These are the kinds of resources available only at top, flagship-level research institutions – and LSU has them,” said LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe. “These new resources can help to increase our research productivity that will, in turn, support the economic development of the state of Louisiana. The technology will also contribute to the quality of our graduate and undergraduate environments,” said LSU Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Risa Palm. Tezpur marks only the beginning in LSU’s efforts to create a top-tier high-performance computing environment, and stems from the recently announced partnership between the LSU Center for Computation and Technology, or CCT, and LSU Information Technology Services, or ITS. Tezpur should become operational at the end of this summer. “Tezpur will dramatically advance our ability to study complex systems of importance to the region and nation, such as coastal erosion or storm surges from hurricanes or erosion, as well as providing insight into mysteries of the universe, such as computing detailed signals from black holes and supernovae,” said CCT Director Ed Seidel. “The acquisition of Tezpur is part of a broader effort – in line with LSU’s new Flagship Information Technology Strategy – to grow the array of high-performance computing resources available for researchers, and through the partnership between CCT, ITS and campus researchers to build capacity in support of research endeavors,” said LSU Chief Information Officer Brian Voss.