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June 23, 2011

Big Ben (Image 3)

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's (PSC) Big Ben, a Cray XT3 computer.

PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, together with Westinghouse Electric Company. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry, and is a resource provider in the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported TeraGrid program, a program of coordinated cyberinfrastructure for education and research.

PSC works with TeraGrid partners to harness the full range of information technologies that enable discovery in U.S. science and engineering. PSC contributes to the work of the Teragrid's coordinating Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG), with leadership roles in user support, security, accounting, education, outreach and training. NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure provides U.S. academic researchers with support for and access to leadership-class computing infrastructure and research.

TeraGrid combines leadership-class resources at 11 partner sites to create an integrated, persistent computational resource. Using high-performance network connections, the TeraGrid integrates high-performance computers, data resources and tools, and high-end experimental facilities around the country. Currently, TeraGrid resources include more than a petaflop of computing capability and more than 30 petabytes of online and archival data storage, with rapid access and retrieval over high-performance networks. Researchers can also access more than 100 discipline-specific databases. With this combination of resources, the TeraGrid is the world's largest, most comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.

Visit the TeraGrid website Here for more information about the program. Further information about Big Ben is available Here. For more information about the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, visit the PSC website Here. [Image 3 of 3 related images. Back to Image 1.] (Date of Image: 2005)

Credit: Courtesy Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

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