TACC

TACC
Name	TACC
Established	2001
Headquarters	Austin, Texas
Type	Research center
Parent organization	University of Texas at Austin
Director	Steve R. Welch
Staff	400+

TACC The Texas Advanced Computing Center is a research center specializing in high-performance computing, data-intensive science, and computational research. It provides supercomputing resources, software engineering, and user support to researchers across fields such as astrophysics, climate science, genomics, and engineering. TACC collaborates with universities, national laboratories, and industry to accelerate scientific discovery and technical innovation.

Overview

TACC operates large-scale computing systems and data storage to support projects from institutions including University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and California Institute of Technology. Its services enable simulations and analyses for researchers affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Argonne National Laboratory. TACC supports workflows that span software frameworks like Hadoop, TensorFlow, MPI (Message Passing Interface), OpenMP, and CUDA. The center engages with federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health to host funded projects and resource allocations.

History

Founded in 2001 as part of the University of Texas at Austin, TACC grew out of initiatives tied to national cyberinfrastructure planning and investments from agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Early collaborations included partnerships with Microsoft Research, IBM, and Intel Corporation to explore scalable computing architectures. Over time, TACC deployed successive generations of supercomputers, collaborating with vendors like Cray Inc., Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and NVIDIA. Major milestones include allocation awards through programs connected to the XSEDE framework and participation in regional consortia alongside institutions such as Rice University and Texas A&M University.

Facilities and Resources

TACC houses on-premises data centers and operates large-scale clusters and storage arrays acquired through procurement with providers like Cray Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Notable systems historically hosted at TACC have included petascale-class clusters composed of nodes using processors from Intel Corporation and accelerators from NVIDIA. TACC offers workflow and data-management platforms compatible with tools such as Globus, Slurm Workload Manager, Singularity (software), and Docker. The center maintains high-performance network connectivity with regional research networks including Internet2, Energy Sciences Network, and the Texas Advanced Network. TACC’s visualization facilities support immersive environments used by teams from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and European Space Agency collaborators for analyzing complex datasets.

Research and Applications

Researchers across disciplines leverage TACC resources for projects in astrophysics with teams from Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and Max Planck Society; climate modeling with groups from Princeton University, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and Met Office; genomics with investigators at Broad Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Wellcome Sanger Institute; and materials science with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. TACC-enabled simulations have supported studies related to exascale preparedness, machine learning for scientific inference with frameworks like PyTorch, and multi-scale modeling in computational fluid dynamics tied to projects from Boeing, General Electric, and Lockheed Martin. Collaborative work with consortia such as Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation-funded initiatives and NSF BIGDATA awards has expanded applications in data science and AI.

Education and Outreach

TACC runs training programs, workshops, and summer institutes aimed at researchers and students from partner institutions like Texas A&M University, University of Houston, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. Educational offerings include tutorials on parallel programming with MPI (Message Passing Interface), GPU acceleration using CUDA, and data-management strategies using Globus. Outreach includes K–12 initiatives coordinated with organizations such as Teach For America-partnered programs and museum collaborations with the Bullock Texas State History Museum and the Blanton Museum of Art to demonstrate scientific visualization. TACC staff present at conferences including Supercomputing Conference, International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, and NeurIPS to disseminate best practices and training materials.

Partnerships and Funding

TACC’s operations are supported by institutional backing from University of Texas at Austin and through competitive awards from agencies like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and project funding from foundations including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Industry partnerships include collaborative procurement and research with Intel Corporation, NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and cloud collaborations involving Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. TACC participates in regional and national consortia such as XSEDE, Campus Champions, and state-level initiatives with Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board-affiliated programs to broaden access for academic researchers.

Category:Research institutes in the United States Category:Supercomputer sites Category:University of Texas at Austin