In 2012, the Primary Data Center underwent $1.6 million in upgrades to build a facility dedicated to research computing. Completed in just three months, it includes a 680-square-foot raised floor data center and a viewing gallery with a conference room. The Research Data Center is home to the flagship IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, which has 209 teraflops of computing power—the equivalent of more than 17,000 laptops—to support the Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation and other big data initiatives. The research computing equipment is maintained by the Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC), which helps more than 900 University researchers advance their research through computational science.

Honors

green 500 logo 3rd (tie) on list of world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers
(June 2012)
top 500 logo 99th (tie) on list of world’s most powerful supercomputing sites
(June 2012)

Construction

View a timelapse of the construction of the Research Data Center during Summer 2012.