OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Jan. 9, 2007 -- Eight projects led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have been awarded more than 27 million hours of computing time at the lab's Center for Computational Sciences.

The awards, announced Monday by the Department of Energy's Office of Science, are part of the 2007 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. Of the total 95 million hours of processor time awarded to 45 projects by DOE, 75 million hours will be performed on ORNL's Cray XT4 (Jaguar) and Cray X1E (Phoenix) systems. Argonne, Pacific Northwest and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories are providing additional computing resources.

"I am excited by the number and scope of the research projects won by Oak Ridge," said ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth. "What we are seeing is a marvelous return on the investments DOE made in building one of the world's most powerful computers."

DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach conceived and initiated the INCITE program in 2003. The initiative gives industry a unique opportunity to use the world's most powerful computers to solve problems of great importance.

The computing time allocations include nine industry research projects, more than double the number from 2006. General Atomics, The Boeing Company and Dreamworks Animation, are participating in the program for a second year. General Atomics and Corning will be new users to the ORNL Cray machines at the National Center for Computational Sciences.

Processor or computing time refers to how time is allocated on a supercomputer. A project receiving 1 million hours could run on 2,000 processors for 500 hours, or about 21 days.

With 7.5 million processor hours, Thomas Schulthess of ORNL's Computer Science and Mathematics Division heads a research team that could lead to the development of a variety of better materials. The award is for 7 million hours on Jaguar and 500,
'"/>

Contact: Ron Walli
wallira@ornl.gov
865-576-0226
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
9-Jan-2007