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IBM grant latest in string of IT accomplishments for IU
Jan. 23, 2001
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- International Business Machines (IBM; NYSE:IBM) today (Jan. 23) announced that it has awarded a Shared University Research (SUR) grant to Indiana University. The grant will provide an upgrade to IU's IBM RS/6000 Research SP supercomputer with a total retail value of $1 million.
Combined with additional expenditures by IU, the upgrade expands IU's largest supercomputer to nearly 300 GFLOPS (300 billion mathematical operations per second), making it one of the largest supercomputers in the Midwest. This upgrade expands the capacity of IU's RS/6000 SP to a level within the top 100 of the list of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers.
"This is the third consecutive year IBM has awarded Indiana University $1 million or more in equipment through our Shared University Research program," said Anne S. Gardner, IBM vice president of university relations. "Our track record makes it clear that there's a strong relationship between IBM and IU and that we value the research being conducted at the university."
Michael A. McRobbie, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, stated, "This SUR grant underscores the value of the innovative computer and computational science research being done at Indiana University.
"The grant will help create a unique supercomputer resource distributed across IU's two main research campuses in Indianapolis and Bloomington. IU's high-speed optical fiber network will integrate the computers into a single massive computing resource," McRobbie said.
The IBM SUR grant is the latest event in an academic year already packed with important advances related to information technology for IU. In December, a $105 million grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc., the largest single grant ever received by the university, established the Indiana Genomics Initiative, building on existing resources at the IU School of Medicine and taking advantage of IU's world-class information technology infrastructure.
Early in November, IU participated in an extremely successful exhibit at SuperComputing2000 in Dallas, Texas. This exhibit, called Research@Indiana, was a collaboration with the University of Notre Dame and Purdue University, showcasing advanced information technology research at these universities.
Such a collaboration among a state's major research institutions was a first in the history of the SuperComputing conference series. A large portion of the more than 5,000 conference attendees visited the Research@Indiana display to see the many advanced computer applications demonstrated.
Praise for Research@Indiana came directly from the top leadership of the SuperComputing2000 conference. Louis Turcotte, recently appointed as CIO at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, said, "As the SuperComputing2000 General Chair, and a resident of Indiana, I was extremely proud of Indiana's participation. Any attendee quickly realized that Indiana is on the forefront of advanced computing and the state is well positioned as a national leader."
Also, in September, IU announced the awarding of a $3 million grant from Digital Libraries Initiative-Phase 2, a multi-agency federal program with funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant is enabling IU to create a groundbreaking digital library to support research and education in the field of music. The Digital Music Library project will advance IU's position as a leader in the application of information technology in the arts and humanities.
Craig Stewart, director of research and academic computing at IU, project manager for Research@Indiana, and one of the lead investigators on the SUR grant, commented, "This series of accomplishments, from the digital libraries award to the IBM SUR grant, demonstrates the quality of IU's information technology environment, the distinction of IU's researchers and the strength of collaborations between the researchers and the information technology organization."
IU is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and one of the largest universities in the United States. It has more than 100,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses. Information about IU is available at http://www.indiana.edu
IBM and RS/6000 SP are registered trademarks of the International Business Machines Corp. in the United States, other countries or both. Information about IBM is available at http://www.ibm.com
Related Web sites for more information:
• List of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers: http://www.top500.org
• Indiana Genomics Initiative: http://www.ingen.iu.edu/
• SuperComputing2000: http://www.sc2000.org
• Research@Indiana: http://www.indiana.edu/~rindiana
(Catherine Kovach, IBM, 914-499-6609, kovach@us.ibm.com or Christine Fitzpatrick, UITS, 317-278-1818, cfitzpat@iupui.edu)