News Library
SUPER NEWS: A SUPERCOMPUTER
Published on January 18, 1999
© The Buffalo News Inc.
Announcement of a new $7 million supercomputer research center for the University at Buffalo adds one more welcome star to the cluster of stellar centers that bolsters UB's bid for national research and academic prominence.
Indeed, as UB President William R. Greiner said in unveiling the facility, the new Center for Computational Research should "catapult UB into the ranks of the nation's top academic supercomputing sites." That's good for faculty, students and this entire region. Word of the new center follows Gov. Pataki's Jan. 6 "State of the State" announcement that UB and Roswell Park Cancer Institute will get $5 million to develop advanced biotechnology testing laboratories. Add that to such other UB-based centers as the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, the existing Center for High Performance Computing, the Great Lakes Program, the Photonics Research Laboratory and the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition that, among other projects, is developing postal computer scanners that can "read" handwritten mail addresses. Even beyond the enhancement of UB's reputation and the attraction of major grant funding to this area, though, this new center will boost Western New York efforts to develop high-technology industries. Several existing companies here already have expressed interest in the supercomputer center's advanced capabilities. The new facility, built in an unused cafeteria near the "Spine" on UB's North Campus, boasts two major supercomputers -- an IBM machine that's a successor to the "Deep Blue" computer that defeated chess master Garry Kasparov, and a Silicon Graphics model that both monitors the nation's nuclear stockpiles and provided the animation for the movies "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life." Designed to grow even more powerful than Cornell University's supercomputer Theory Center, it will benefit UB researchers who until now have been forced to try to book time on academic supercomputers in Illinois and California. It also boosts UB's new department of computer science and engineering, announced last summer to provide students with more computer degree programs. The computer industry and university funding used for this center should pay major dividends in knowledge and economic development. That's no calculated risk -- it's a number-crunching lock on the future.<
Search again:
