Lonestar 4 Supercomputer Dedicated
[caption id="attachment_2384" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Pres. Bill Powers, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Michael Dell, & Jay Boisseau "]
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Supercomputing is vital to progress in automotive, aerospace, medical, pharmaceutical, energy, and many other industries. And as President Bill Powers puts it, at The University of Texas, “We’re getting accustomed to being at the front of the supercomputing pack.”
On April 4, UT and its Texas Advanced Computing Center dedicated their newest supercomputer, Lonestar 4. Since it was deployed in February, the system—which ranks among the world’s most powerful academic supercomputers—has computed more than 100,000 jobs using more than 34 million CPU hours.
Scientists around the country are using Lonestar 4 to run simulations and conduct virtual experiments for cross-disciplinary projects—to develop new materials and renewable energy devices, model storm surges, and more.
Recently, Lonestar 4 helped University of Tokyo researchers model Japan’s devastaing earthquake and tsunami, and to predict the path taken by radioactive materials dispersed from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the atmosphere.
The National Science Foundation funded TACC to deploy Lonestar 4, along with contributions from individual scientists, UT-Austin, the UT System, the UT Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech totaling $12 million.
“We’re proud to make Lonestar 4 available to researchers in Texas and across the country,” TACC director Jay Boisseau says, “and we will continue to increase its capabilities to facilitate new research, education, and discovery.”
