Suprecomputer Center Breaks Ground on Building Expansion
| June 12, 2006
 |
| Artists rendering of San
Diego Super Computer Center expansion. |
|
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and San Diego Supercomputer
Center (SDSC) Director Fran Berman broke ground Monday
on the center’s 80,000-square-foot building
expansion. SDSC’s building extension will double
the size of the national science, engineering and
technology center, adding needed room for trillions
of bytes of data, powerful supercomputers and more
than 400 professional multidisciplinary staff. The
building extension marks SDSC’s twenty-first
year and an era of expanded national leadership for
the center.
"SDSC is an integral part of the UCSD community,"
said Chancellor Fox at the groundbreaking ceremony.
"The center's quest for innovation in high-performance
computing and data technologies is tremendous –
this expansion will further advance SDSC's leadership
role in these areas."
“SDSC’s new building extension will facilitate
SDSC’s role as a national data repository and
a national cyberinfrastructure center,” remarked
SDSC Director and HPC Endowed Professor Fran Berman.
“What makes this building extension so important
to UCSD and the nation is the human, software and
hardware resources it will house; and the discoveries
it will enable.”
 |
| Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said SDSC's expansion will fuel the center's role as a world leader in data-intensive computing. |
|
With the existing building and new extension, SDSC
will have 160,000 gross square feet of space and nearly
five megawatts of power – enough wattage to
light five million homes – to operate the center
and its high-performance computing and data systems.
The expanded 5,000-square-foot machine room floor
(above the current 13,000) will support future growth
and house networking that connects SDSC and UCSD across
the country and around the world, and will include
a new high-tech visualization center. The expansion
will support SDSC’s current role as one of the
largest data storage resources in the country, offering
users more than 18 petabytes of available tape storage
and 1.4 petabytes of disk storage. The expansion will
also house collaboratory facilities for SDSC’s
projects and staff, offices and meeting rooms, as
well as a new 250-seat auditorium that can be reconfigured
into smaller spaces.
 |
| Among those breaking ground were (L to R) Senior Vice Chancellor Marsha Chandler, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, and SDSC Director Fran Berman. |
|
“SDSC hosts an amazing assembly of organizations,
programs, projects and above all, people, that have
led the way in creating and applying cyberinfrastructure
to research and education,” said Dan Atkins,
director of the National Science Foundation’s
Office of Cyberinfrastructure, who spoke via videotape
at the groundbreaking ceremonies. “Our nation
is fortunate that this center continues to serve and
catalyze our research communities.”
Interaction and collaboration were the themes for
the building design, designed by the by the firm of
EHDD (Esherick Homsey Dodge and Davis). The new extension
is scheduled for completion by June 2008. Specifically
designed for efficiency, the building has already
won honors. The Higher Education Energy Partnership
awarded the building expansion its 2005 Best Practices
Award for the innovative heating, ventilation and
air conditioning design developed for the facility.
During construction, the existing SDSC building will
remain open and in operation. Public tours of the
existing machine room and high-tech facilities are
welcome and available on request by emailing tours@sdsc.edu.
Webcam photos of the building extension construction
will be available on the SDSC
website so viewers can follow the new building’s
progress.
|
