Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing

The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC), housed at Franklin H.T. Rhodes Hall on the campus of Cornell University, is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program. It was formerly called the Cornell Theory Center.

History

The CTC was established in 1985 under the direction of Nobel Laureate and supercomputing visionary Kenneth Wilson, who was a Cornell Physics professor. In 1984, the National Science Foundation began work on establishing five new supercomputer centers, including the CTC, to provide high-speed computing resources for research within the United States. In 1985, a team from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications began the development of NSFNet, a TCP/IP-based computer network that could connect to the ARPANET, at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This high-speed network, unrestricted to academic users, became a backbone to which regional networks would be connected. Initially a 56-kbit/s network, traffic on the network grew exponentially; the links were upgraded to 1.5-Mbit/s T1s in 1988 and to 45 Mbit/s in 1991. The NSFNet was a major milestone in the development of the Internet and its rapid growth coincided with the development of the World Wide Web.^[1][2] In the mid 1990s, in addition to support from the National Science Foundation, the CTC received funding from the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institutes of Health, New York State, IBM Corporation, and other members of the center's Corporate Research Institute.^[3]

In 2007 the CTC was reorganized and renamed in a move designed to make its high-performance computing resources more efficient and effective for the university's researchers and to take advantage of growing opportunities for research funding. As part of the reorganization, the CAC reports directly to the Office of the Vice Provost for Research instead of being a part of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science. David Lifka, who previously served as the CTC's director of high-performance and innovative computing, became CAC Director.^[4]

Achievements

The CTC/CAC have achieved a number of firsts, including being the first Dell supercomputer deployment (first Dell system to make "Top 500" supercomputer list); the first & fastest IBM Scalable POWERparallel System SP2 supercomputer deployment (serial number 1); the first parallel version of MATLAB (MultiMATLAB) designed with the MATLAB product; and the first parallel job scheduler for Windows. ^[5]

Cornell Computing and Information Science is currently planning a new building to be funded by a $25 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is expected to open in 2014.

References

1. ^ "The Internet - The Launch of NSFNET". National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf0050/internet/launch.htm. Retrieved 2006-01-05. 
2. ^ "A Brief History of NSF and the Internet". National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=103050. Retrieved 2006-01-05. 
3. ^ Cornell Theory Center, from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
4. ^ Steele, Bill (July 6, 2007). "Cornell Theory Center is now Cornell Center for Advanced Computing". Cornell Chronicle. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July07/newCAC.ws.html. Retrieved 2010-09-18. 
5. ^ "History". Cornell University. http://www.cac.cornell.edu/about/history.aspx. Retrieved 2010-09-18. 

External links

• Official website of the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing