University of Arkansas Receives $1.7 million for HPC Improvements

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville announced that it has received a $1.7million grant from the National Science Foundation to improve the facility that houses the supercomputers for the college.  The funds will be used to purchase air conditioners for the supercomputers and equipment that ensures that electricity can run around the clock, since many research projects require programs to run for several days and cannot sustain a power outage.

This National Science Foundation grant will allow Arkansas to move forward substantially in the area of research computing. It will provide the infrastructure that we need to house large-scale computers and storage that support several areas of science, and will improve our ability to compete nationally. We are delighted that the National Science Foundation has chosen to support this project,” said Amy Apon, Ph.D., University of Arkansas computer science professor and Director of the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center.

The funding will also help enhance the network capabilities available to UA researchers from the state’s high speed optical network.  The high speed optical network, the Arkansas Research and Education Optical network, allows researchers using computers for advanced scientific research at Arkansas’s four-year universities to have better access to the state’s supercomputing resources.  For more info, read their full release here.