After 10 years of operation, the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications is shutting down for good.
Some stats:
- The system was awarded to NCSA in 2007 by the National Science Foundation, and became fully operational in 2013
- Blue Waters had $1.1 billion of direct economic impact on the state
- Launched the Blue Waters and New Frontiers Initiative Fellowships, as well as numerous other educational initiatives, impacting 225 academic institutions in 50 states and territories, as well as other countries
From the NCSA press release:
Blue Waters leaves an impressive legacy of accomplishments throughout the science, engineering, research, industrial and academic communities. Just some of the research areas that saw groundbreaking accomplishments from Blue Waters covered genomics, viruses such as COVID, HIV, Zika and influenza; understanding and predicting black holes and gravity waves; the evolution of galaxies, supernovae and the universe; political gerrymandering; tornadoes and severe weather; climate change and space weather; earthquakes and volcanoes; understanding photosynthesis and crop yields; satellite-based tree census; mapping and measuring the Earth; and artificial intelligence. And the Blue Waters and NCSA Industry teams worked with the center’s industrial partners to use physics-based codes to open new avenues in high-fidelity modeling, optimization and design for engineering that were previously considered impossible.
In 2022, NCSA will be launching the Delta system as the new supercomputing endeavor.
Top photo from NCSA website.