University of Hawaii Says Aloha to Supercomputer Contract

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Each year, the Maui High Performance Computing Center provides more than 38 million hours of computing time per year in high-tech research for the military. Now, Hawaii News Now reports that the University of Hawaii has lost a multi-million dollar contract to run the supercomputer center on Maui. As one of six supercomputer centers in the country run by the Department of Defense for high-tech research, the Maui High Performance Computing Center has been managed by UH since 2001.

While the University of Hawaii was one of four bidders, the Air Force announced on August 1 that the new contract has been awarded to contractor SAIC, based in McLean, Virginia.

Comments

  1. Rich Hickey says

    As an employee of SAIC doing HPC work all I can say is, When do I get to move to Maui? (-:

  2. Perhaps a poorly chosen headline. From the banner, it’s unclear if they were awarded the contract, or if they lost it.

  3. A lot of data centers are in Virginia (e.g. Amazon’s cloud)… maybe Virginia has cheaper electricity… anyway, I can’t see any reason DoD needs to put a supercomputer in Hawaii.

  4. I love the “mainland” contractor designation. Nothing like a little local spin to plant a negative seed of doubt. Also wonder how much the senior senator from HI (Daniel K. Inouye) will have his staff poke and prod into why the UH didn’t get the bid.

    Ahhh… the smell of tax payers money being spent…

    FJW

  5. The MHPCC DSRC in Kihei, Maui will still exist in Maui. It will still be part of the five DSRCs. It will just be run by SAIC, and not the University of Hawaii.

  6. The center in Maui, has been a waste of money since the day it was opened
    in 1993. When I think low operating costs, I think of Hawaii. 😉 The only worse
    location for a center is Fairbanks, I am looking at you ARSC.

    Just close down both of these centers and move the equipment to some other
    place where the associated costs of operation isn’t as high. There is no technical
    reason for either of these centers to be located where they are. There are both
    based on political pandering, time to end the insanity.

    • Bob, given that this center is used by DoD, one would have to assume that its geographic location is of strategic importance. This isn’t about palm trees.

  7. Rich, its not about palm trees, its about pork barrel spending. Both the Maui and Alaska centers were initially created through earmarks put into the DoD budgets by their state’s senators.

    These centers may well do good work for DoD, but their operational budgets would be a lot lower if they were located other than on Maui and in Fairbanks. But we all know the Federal government doesn’t need to worry about money….

  8. Rich,

    Deleting of comments? Really?

    FJW

    • FJW, we will not publish comments that name names and accuse people of wrongdoing.

      You have a right to voice your opinion, but this is not a forum for indictments.

  9. Heisenberg says

    The MHPCC is a giant waste of money. With the Internet the super computer does not to be located near military installation to be useful. Of course your assuming useful work is actually done there to begin with. As a former employee I would say its just a giant boondoggle based on experience