UT-Austin To Unveil One Of World's Fastest Supercomputers

AUSTIN, TX — The Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin will dedicate Frontera, a new National Science Foundation-funded supercomputer that is the fastest at any U.S. university and the fifth most powerful in the world.

With palpable pride, university officials noted this makes UT Austin home to the two fastest academic supercomputers in the U.S., Frontera and Stampede2 (#19).

The unveiling is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, Sept. 3, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, 10100 Burnet Rd., Advanced Computing Building (ACB), Building 205.

BACKGROUND: Since 2006, TACC has built and operated three supercomputers that debuted in the Top 10 most powerful systems in the world: Ranger (2008), Stampede1 (2012) and Stampede2 (2017), as well as three other systems that debuted in the Top 25. Frontera continues this tradition of leadership. TACC supercomputers allow the nation’s academic researchers to advance work in all fields of study, enabling simulation and modeling, artificial intelligence and data analytics at the largest scales.

Event activities:

2:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.: Remarks, ACB Auditorium

• Dan Stanzione, Associate VP for Research and Executive Director, TACC.
• Gregory L. Fenves, President, UT Austin.
• Fleming Crim, Chief Operating Officer, National Science Foundation.
• Patricia Damkroger, VP and GM for the Extreme Computing Organization, Intel.
• Thierry Pellegrino, VP for Business Strategy & HPC Solutions Server and Infrastructure Systems, Dell EMC.
• Dan Jaffe, Emcee, VP for Research, UT Austin.

3:30 to 4:30 p.m.: Human Data Interaction Lab & Frontera Tours, Start in ACB Lobby.

3:30 to 4:30 p.m.: Early Science Presentations.