Supercomputer launched at UQ

A $4 million SGI Origin 3000 supercomputer has been officially launched by Paul Lucas, state minister for innovation and information economy, at the University of Queensland.

The supercomputer was purchased by the Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation (QPSF) "“ a consortium of six Queensland universities "“ with state government funding.

Mr Lucas also officially opened the upgraded QPSF Visualisation and Advanced Computing Laboratory, which allows researchers to use virtual reality to interpret the vast amounts of information generated by the supercomputer.

The Queensland Government has committed $10 million over three years to develop world-class supercomputing facilities in Queensland - $8 million has been awarded so far to the Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation to buy the supercomputer, large scale data management system and equipment in the visualisation laboratory.

The new facilities will assist researchers at UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience in their work in bioinformatics, developmental biology and functional genomics.