ANU Plans $50 Million Supercomputer Spend

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The National Computational Infrastructure [NCI], a group within the Australian National University [ANU], is working towards landing a contract with the Australian Federal government that would earmark $50 million in funding for a new datacenter and supercomputer by 2012.  The Federal government announced the initial budget line item for the $50 million in a May budget release following a 2008 report that argued strongly in favor of the upgrade.  The supercomputer’s main purpose is to climate change modeling and research, but will certainly end up performing multiple tasks.

Professor Lindsay Botten, director of NCI, is currently working on a project plan for the funds.  If officially approved, NCI could see a new machine procured and housed in a new Canberra datacenter by late 2011 or early 2012.  None of the funds would be towards the day-to-day infrastructure costs such as power and cooling.  NCI will rely on funding provided by the research institutions that use the facility to pay for the operational costs.

For more info, read the full article here at ZDNet AU.