Bloomington, Ind. -- Indiana University has taken a major step forward to
join the national leaders in high performance computing and communications
with the commissioning of a radical new supercomputer from Silicon Graphics
and its subsidiary Cray Research.

  The 64 processor Origin2000 supercomputer is one of the most powerful
systems at any university in the United States, and it is one of the first
of the new generation Origin series to be installed. It is a major focus of
a $2.5 million project called SCAAMP (for Scientific Applications on Arrays
of Multi-Processors) led by Randall Bramley of IU Bloomington's Computer
Science Department and Rick McMullen from University Computing Services. The
project was funded with a major grant from the National Science Foundation
(NSF) and matching funds from IU through the Office of the Vice President
for Information Technology and the Office of the Vice President for Research.

  SCAAMP is a collaborative effort between IU researchers and researchers at
other NSF-funded supercomputing facilities at the leading edge of scientific
computing. It will allow these researchers to investigate how to harness the
power of supercomputers in different locations using high-speed networks. The
project will make it possible for researchers in disciplines ranging from
astronomy to theater and drama to collaborate on increasingly complex
problems using the power of multiple supercomputers.

  The applications that are part of the SCAAMP project involve simulations of
complex systems. For example, researchers conduct illumination modeling of
large scale structures, such as suspension bridges and building complexes.
They also develop models of the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies,
the flow of chemicals through the soil, the fundamental processes of
chemistry and the subatomic structures of matter.

  Unlike many previous generations of supercomputers, the Origin2000 is
designed to be completely compatible with desktop computer workstations. It
will run computer programs designed on desktop computers with minimum
modification, but with vastly greater power and speed. When additional power
is required to solve computational problems, the Origin2000 can be scaled up
by adding more processors without degrading overall performance. A primary
challenge for the SCAAMP project is the development of software that takes
advantage of this scaling capability.

  Critical to the SCAAMP project will be a new high-speed network at Indiana
University that will interconnect researchers on the University's Bloomington
and Indianapolis campuses. This network will enable connections with research
organizations elsewhere in the United States using the NSF's high-speed
network. This will allow remote supercomputers and sophisticated
visualization systems to be connected together interactively as part of a
larger geographically dispersed, but integrated, system. The speeds required
for such networks are well beyond those used in standard University networks.

  This infrastructure and the research it supports will make a significant
contribution to Indiana University's participation in the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), whose refunding for the next five
years was recently announced by the NSF under its Partnerships for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure Program.

  Indiana University Vice President for Information Technology Michael
McRobbie said that the University's substantial investment in the SCAAMP
project emphasizes its determination to be a leader in high performance
computing and communications. "It is also a comment on the very high quality
of the researchers involved in SCAAMP," McRobbie said. "SCAAMP provides them
with the world-class infrastructure to pursue innovative new research." He
added that by participating in projects and programs with NCSA, IU will also
be a partner in the world's premier supercomputer center, which will be of
great value to the University's research base.

  "Indiana University's SCAAMP project represents the integration of high
performance computation across a diverse set of disciplines with fresh
approaches to visualization results," said Ed McCracken, chairman and chief
executive officer of Silicon Graphics. "We are very pleased that IU chose
the Cray Origin2000 system for the next step in this project. We also have
tremendous confidence that IU will bring the full power of each computational
resource to a broader spectrum of users in a way that is much more accessible
than ever before."

  "The grant from the NSF is specifically aimed at supporting the kind of
unique collaborative projects that are the hallmark of research at IU," said
George Walker, Vice President for Research and Dean of the University
Graduate School. "When we saw the potential impact this project could have
on scientific computing at IU and with other NSF partners, we believed it
was essential to commit the University's support and resources to this
project."

  The SCAAMP project is the latest success story of the Computational Science
Program initiated in the early nineties by Morton Lowengrub, dean of the IU
College of Arts and Sciences. "The Computational Science Program is a
response to dramatic changes in the needs of science over the last 15 years,
changes that have introduced a powerful and entirely new paradigm in
research based on using computer modeling, data analysis and visualization,"
Lowengrub said. "It brings together various areas of computer science to
craft strategies for the solution of applied problems. The new SCAAMP
project is an example of the potential and the power of this exciting,
interdisciplinary approach to computing."

  "The SCAAMP project shows the important role computational methods now have
in all fields of endeavor," said SCAAMP Project Director Randall Bramley.
"Researchers from more than a half dozen different disciplines worked
together to develop the proposal, and SCAAMP will aid innovative  research
in all of those fields."

  The Origin2000 has been installed at IU's Wrubel Computing Center and is
capable of performing 21 billion multiply and add operations per second,
roughly 1,000 times the processing power of a high-end PC. It will have 15
gigabytes (billions of bytes) of main memory, 100 gigabytes of disk storage
and 1,000 gigabytes of additional storage.