March 28th was the 10th anniversary of the launch of the groundbreaking Blue Waters Supercomputer, which held the designation of fastest supercomputer at a university for six years.
Today is Blue Waters Supercomputer Day in #ILLINOIS commemorating its launch on March 28, 2013. Blue Waters was the fastest supercomputer at a university worldwide for six years and delivered over 42 billion core hours to scientists and engineers across the country. pic.twitter.com/H1TDCaP0DT
— NCSAatIllinois (@NCSAatIllinois) March 28, 2023
The system was powered down at the end of 2021 to make way for the Delta Supercomputing System, which became operational last year. The two systems were designed for different sorts of workloads, according to Associate Director, Integrated Cyberinfrastructure Tim Boerner: “Where Blue Waters was designed to support a fewer number of very large and complex research workloads, Delta is designed to support a much larger number of more typical research workloads. That said, the performance improvements year-over-year in computing technology means that the much smaller Delta packs a significant punch for its size.”
During Blue Waters tenure, the system generated more than $1 billion in direct economic impact for the state of Illinois.