The Blue Waters project will build the world's first sustained petascale computational system dedicated to open scientific research. The project will include intense support for application development, system software development, interactions with business and industry, and educational programs. This comprehensive approach will ensure that users across the country will be able to use Blue Waters to its fullest potential.
The dramatic increase in computing capability with this unrivaled national asset will create breakthrough advances in nearly all fields of science and engineering. When Blue Waters comes online in 2011, researchers will be able to predict the behavior of complex biological systems, understand the production of heavy elements in supernova, design catalysts and other materials at the atomic level, predict changes in the earth's climate and ecosystems, and simulate complex engineered systems like power plants and airplanes.
Blue Waters is a joint effort of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IBM, and the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation. It is supported by the National Science Foundation.
For more information, please see the Blue Waters website.