USC’s Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications houses the nation’s seventh fastest supercomputer in an academic setting, according to TOP500 Supercomputer Sites, which ranks the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world.

This fall, USC’s new supercomputer cluster clocked in at 44.19 teraflops, or 44.19 trillion floating-point calculations per second, on its 768-node, 10-gigabit backbone cluster, placing it seventh in the nation among academic supercomputers and 61st in the world among all supercomputers.

Just six months ago, USC’s supercomputer achieved a benchmark of 30.99 teraflops, earning a rank of ninth among academic supercomputers in the U.S. and 63rd among all supercomputers in the world.

“USC’s HPCC has achieved its current status among the world’s top supercomputer sites through moderate local investments and without national funding,” said Priya Vashishta, faculty executive director of High-Performance Computing and Communications. “USC’s approach to granting access to its supercomputing resources is one of the best in the nation: HPCC allows USC faculty and graduate students unfettered access to a world-class facility.”

Vashista is a professor of chemical engineering, materials science and computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and a professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at USC College.

“Our resources enable researchers to move beyond the limitations of traditional research to produce new understandings of problems and meaningful results that have far-reaching impact on science and advanced technology,” Vashishta said.