UT Named Microsoft Top-Ten Supercomputing Institution

The University of Tennessee is one of ten universities worldwide to be named a Microsoft Institute of High-Performance Computing.

The designation is accompanied by a gift of $300,000, along with computer hardware and software, that will continue annually into the foreseeable future. The announcement was made Tuesday at the Supercomputing 2005 conference in Seattle.

"This multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment builds on the relationship we started with the Cornell Theory Center years ago, and will allow us to understand much more deeply the requirements and opportunities for applying results of research and innovation in high performance computing," said Bob Muglia, a senior vice president at Microsoft.

"The institutes, such as the University of Southampton, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, are leaders in their fields. The research centers at the institutes have been running HPC (High-Performance Computing) platforms for years in critical research environments, so their scientists are experienced not only in advanced computing but also in a broad range of HPC platforms serving high numbers of users."

UT Computer Science Distinguished Professor Dr. Jack Dongarra said being named one of the Institutes of High-Performance Computing reflects the university's high-impact work in computational sciences.

"We're on the list because of our continued development of enabling technology that finds its way into the hands of computational scientists around the world," he said.

Microsoft's gift will offer UT scientists an important level of flexibility in the research they conduct using the donated funds and equipment. Dongarra noted that Microsoft's interest in supercomputing also has practical applications for consumers.

"There's a trickle-down effect that occurs with supercomputing," said Dongarra. "The things we do at the high end eventually find the way to the commercial end, and ultimately into the home computing market."

Examples of initial supercomputing investments resulting in industrial and other major innovations include:

• Flow analysis programs in the 1970s were created at national laboratories; by the early 1990s, these programs were being used for cell phone plastic molds
• Vibration analysis (NASTRAN) was developed for government projects and is now available to all mechanical engineering firms to design airplane wings, auto bodies, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
• A Cray-2 was loaned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to do the first analysis of X-ray defraction crystallography data of the AIDS Virus
• By the early 70's, graphics-based finite element analysis software, such as LS-DYNA, was limited to expensive mainframe computers generally owned by the aeronautics, automotive, defense, and nuclear industries. Now, FEA is used for safer and cleaner cars (crash analysis), lighter milk cartons, and running shoe materials

Supercomputing algorithms have resulted in human genome mapping that detects birth defects and Alzheimer's disease. Even the design of sharper and longer-lasting disposable razor blades was achieved by using computational algorithms. With the aid of computer infrastructure models, researchers are able to accurately predict the effects of the recent hurricanes and plan for future natural disasters.

The other institutes will be based at: Cornell University, the University of Texas; the University of Utah; the University of Virginia (USA); Nizhni Novgorod University (Russia); Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China); Southampton University (England); Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan); and the University of Stuttgart (Germany).

"The supercomputing community is small," said Dongarra. "I've worked for years with people from the other institutions on the list, and it is an honor to be included."