The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin is renowned for its leadership in making research computing widely available to the scientific research community. The recent dedication of “Stampede” – UT’s new Dell HPC cluster that is one of the most powerful systems dedicated to “open” science through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE)— is the result of a technology partnership with TACC that dates back more than a decade. Stampede, which is 20 times more powerful than its predecessor, enables cutting-edge earthquake, environmental and ecological research conducted by thousands of researchers at institutions around the world. In recognition of TACC’s leadership in research computing, Dell presented Dr. Jay Boisseau, the director of TACC, with a Dell Research Center of Excellence Award at the dedication event.
Dell launched its high-performance computing (HPC) program in February 2002 to help forward-looking research universities take a more strategic approach to research computing and expansion of their computational capability. Through our collaborative partnerships with 15 leading research institutions such as TACC, scientists are addressing society’s greatest challenges and pushing the frontiers of science and engineering. In fact, Dell and our university customers serve up more research cycles to scientists using XSEDE than any other vendor.
Dell also puts HPC to good use in medical research and the treatment of cancer. Our HPC team delivered Dell technology that will provide needed computing power to combat pediatric cancer. This helps oncologists identify treatments for children fighting the deadliest and most resistant form of cancer based on the genetic profile of their tumor and has reduced the time it takes to complete this analysis from weeks to hours. For a child with neuroblastoma, this could mean getting five trials through in one week instead of just one.
Dr. Boisseau summed it up well when he said “What is computed here changes the world” in reference to the impact Stampede is having on enabling scientific discoveries.
That’s Dell helping to make a real difference.
More resources
- Dell case study: Stampede features the PowerEdge C8000 series and video Supercomputing Charges Ahead with Stampede at TACC