LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, has tripled the computing capacity of the Southeastern Universities Research Association’s, or SURA’s, regional grid service, known as SURAgrid, through the addition of LSU’s largest current supercomputer, SuperMike.

SURA is a consortium of more than 60 member universities across the Southern United States. One of SURA’s main collaborative research projects among its members is SURAgrid, which CCT Director Ed Seidel was involved in developing.

SURAgrid is a large-scale, regionally distributed grid computing environment that links together high-performance computing resources at the different SURA member sites. Grid computing harnesses multiple computational resources to solve complex problems faster and with greater accuracy than would be possible with a single computer. Grids also can bring problems that are difficult to solve within reach through pooled academic resources.

SURAgrid, with the addition of SuperMike, now has three times the computing capacity it previously did as a direct result of the addition of LSU’s resources. CCT researcher Archit Kulshretha and Kate Barzee with SURA were instrumental in bringing SuperMike into the grid.

Seidel said these types of projects are instrumental in helping LSU, and the South as a whole, better use high-performance computing resources.

“Our state and our region are emerging as leaders in high-performance computing. When we have opportunities such as this to bring our resources into national projects, it helps us move the Southeastern United States into a more prominent position,” Seidel said.

Seidel added that being a part of SURA has benefited both LSU and Louisiana by allowing researchers here to work collaboratively with other Southern universities on projects such as coastal observation, hurricane visualization and other federally supported research.

“SURAgrid is a critically important new utility being developed for our region,” said Jerry P. Draayer, President and CEO of SURA. “By combining our members’ computing resources with the next-generation Internet capabilities now available in the SURA region, we are helping to shape and create the Internet of the future, especially features that will empower collaborative research while enhancing education and our region’s economic competitiveness. LSU’s addition of SuperMike to the SURAgrid pool is a significant step forward in building this regional resource.”

The SURA Coastal Ocean Observing Project, or SCOOP, found at http://www.scoop.lsu.edu/gridsphere/gridsphere , is a great example of how SURA has assembled a national team to address important problems, such as hurricane forecasting, using SURAgrid.

“We are pleased to be able to help expand the computing resources on SURAgrid,” Seidel said. “We hope that these increased computational abilities will allow us to make breakthroughs in key research areas that have important implications not only for Louisiana, but for the country.”

For more information on SURA, please visit http://www.sura.org