History & Mission

Launched in 2000, the University of Southern California's Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) rapidly has become a global leader in research computing.

Home to the most powerful supercomputer funded entirely by a private university, HPCC is a vibrant, interdisciplinary partnership supported by numerous schools and departments across USC. HPCC bridges USC's unique strengths in scientific computing, computer science, and communications by supporting more than 120 research groups in a variety of disciplines, ranging from genomics and geophysics to materials science and language translation.

HPCC researchers in these and other fields use the technology in the USC Center for Data Visualization and Collaboration to display their supercomputing simulations, empowering faculty and students with an enhanced perspective of the world that only large-scale simulations can provide.

Among supercomputers in an academic setting, HPCC's cluster is the 22nd fastest in the world and the 10th fastest in the United States. Among all supercomputers in the world, it is ranked 63rd. HPCC's cluster claimed these distinctions by achieving a benchmark in August 2007 of 17.11 teraflops, or 17.11 trillion calculations per second.

USC has made moderate local investments to achieve its current status among the world's top supercomputer sites, while many of the higher-ranked systems are mega-projects supported by national funding sources. The local aspect of HPCC allows USC researchers unfettered access to a world-class resource.

HPCC seeks to move beyond the traditional realms and problems being tackled by supercomputing to address issues of how people interact with information and each other to help create meaning in a digital society. Part of the focus of HPCC is to expand the reach of "big computing" by addressing system-level questions in social, economic, and cultural research. With its advanced computing and communications resources, HPCC is helping to create the virtual organizations, virtual worlds, and immersive environments that will revolutionize and globalize higher education in the twenty-first century.