The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

Since its inception in 1986, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has used high performance computing to solve significant problems in biomedical engineering, oceanography, astronomy, climate and weather forecasting, and a host of other disciplines. To date, more than 10,000 researchers from more than 1,300 universities and research centers in 49 states have used the Center's facilities. This work has resulted in more than 3,000 published papers. PSC's computing projects use three main production machines: the Cray C90, a vector multiprocessor; the Cray T3D, a scalable, massively parallel processing system; and the DEC Alpha Supercluster, a workstation cluster. The Center concentrates on capability computing, which provides scheduling flexibility and technical and scientific expertise while encouraging single users to exploit maximum processing potential over sustained, uninterrupted periods. This means using all 16 processors on the Cray C90, or all 512 processors on the Cray T3D, for a single project.