ITWire

He said that when reviewing the responses to the request for tender which was issued last year, the NCI had considered a range of factors, including the “pathways from peta-scale to exa-scale (computing) which we imagine will be here by 2020.” Asked who would get access to the machine Professor Stanton said that a shared model had been devised which would ensure that there was a balance between research projects which were deemed to demonstrate scientific excellence and those judged to have national impact.

Likely research areas include weather and climate modelling, computational chemistry, particle physics, astronomy, material science, microbiology, nanotechnology and photonics.

The supercomputer – which boasts the processing grunt of 56,000 desktop computers – will according to the ANU have the power to perform 170,000 calculations per second for each of the seven billion people on the planet. It will also hold 12 petabytes of storage – the equivalent of 240 million four drawer filing cabinets filled with documents.

Separately, the  NCI will also host one of the nodes for the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) research cloud which is now being constructed. The University of Melbourne is leading that $47 million Super Science initiative and last month announced that Xenon had been selected to supply the infrastructure for the first node.

ANU, Monash University and Queensland Cyber Infrastructure will host next three nodes of NeCTAR.