SANTA FE, NM, Jan. 25 -- Governor Bill Richardson today helped launch eight "gateway" sites, which will link communities across the state to New Mexico's Supercomputer, Encanto, and announced another 25 sites will come online soon. Encanto is the fastest public supercomputer in the world.

"The opening of these Supercomputer gateways is significant to New Mexico's economic and high-tech future," Governor Richardson said. "We're bringing the highest level of supercomputing to every corner of the state, giving New Mexicans the opportunity to tap in to its remarkable educational and economic possibilities."

Today's "Connect New Mexico" event connected all eight new gateway sites into the Supercomputer using its new teleconferencing capability. The sites are:

• The University of New Mexico
• New Mexico State University
• Eastern New Mexico
• Western New Mexico University
• New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
• Santa Fe Community College
• San Juan College
• The State Capitol

These sites will be utilized by the universities and local businesses that need high performance computing for design and modeling purposes. The Supercomputer can be used for research, educational activities, training, and business modeling in the areas of energy, environment, digital film, aerospace, and biotechnology, among others.

"Encanto is a valuable resource for our researchers, and we have already witnessed enormous success with leveraging Encanto in grant proposals," said UNM President David Schmidly. "The new teleconferencing abilities will enable our faculty to partner with the other sites statewide, and we will witness its benefits in all facets of our mission - education, research, public service, and as we saw in the demo today, patient care."

"The Supercomputer is a phenomenal high-tech tool," said Barbara Couture, president of New Mexico State University. "Being able to provide supercomputing capabilities through a network of universities and businesses enhances research, education, and economic development capabilities across the state."

The founding institutions for the New Mexico Computing Applications Center, which runs the Supercomputer, are UNM, NMSU, New Mexico Tech, and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

"We now have the fastest publicly available computer in the world to aid in our research and planning," said Dr. Daniel H. Lopez, president of New Mexico Tech. "There are many important environmental challenges, such as the new energy grid, that will make much more significant progress with the Supercomputer.

The Supercomputer, which is housed at Intel in Rio Rancho, can perform 172 trillion calculations per second. Ultimately, there will be 33 sites around the state connected by a secure network into the main computer, all available to business, industry, and institutions of higher learning on a daily basis.

"The Supercomputer will provide remarkable new educational opportunities in high performance computing throughout the state at the Gateway sites," said Jami Grindatto, director of corporate affairs at Intel for the Southwestern U.S. "This network of sites gives supercomputer access to all New Mexicans and will help create the high-tech workforce of the future."

The following Supercomputer gateways are expected to open in the coming months:

• University of New Mexico (Taos, Los Alamos, Valencia, Gallup)
• Central New Mexico Community College
• New Mexico State University (Roswell, Carlsbad, Alamogordo, Dona Ana, Grants)
• New Mexico Highlands University (Las Vegas, Rio Rancho)
• Eastern New Mexico University (Roswell, Ruidoso)
• New Mexico Junior College
• New Mexico Military Institute
• College of Santa Fe
• Clovis Community College
• Mesalands Community College
• Luna Community College
• Northern New Mexico College
• Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute
• Institute of American Indian Arts
• Diné College
• Navajo Technical College

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Source: New Mexico Office of the Governor