National Science Foundation awards UT $457M to open Leadership-Class Computing Facility

The University of Texas’ highly praised computing center has received a $457 million investment and has been selected by the National Science Foundation to construct and lead its Leadership-Class Computing Facility.

The Texas Advanced Computing Center — a UT powerhouse creating and disseminating innovative computing technologies — has worked to advance computational research for 20 years.

As artificial intelligence continues to revolutionize technology, the grant will allow the center to build a facility that will empower and enable more innovative research across the nation, including research that’s not currently possible.

The new supercomputer that will be in the facility, Horizon, will have 10 times the capacity of the current largest academic supercomputer, Frontera, which is housed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and financed through a National Science Foundation grant. Horizon will have more than 100 times the AI capabilities that Frontera has, the computing center said.

UT is in the construction phase, and the new facility is expected to open in 2026. It will be in Round Rock but will have satellite systems at universities in Atlanta, San Diego, Illinois and Pittsburgh. All researchers across the nation can apply for access.

The award fits with UT’s vision of pushing technology and science to the forefront of its mission to become the highest-impact public university, according to officials. This week, the Texas Institute for Electronics at UT received $840 million to build a Department of Defense microelectronics manufacturing facility — one of the largest federal awards a UT System school has received. UT has also declared 2024 “The Year of AI.”

“We’re all keenly aware of the importance of computing, AI, data science, machine learning. These are now just increasingly important tools to try to solve those most pressing problems,” UT President Jay Hartzell told the American-Statesman in a phone interview. “The university has been blessed through a lot of great work and support to be at the cutting edge with those tools, and this increased investment and partnership with the NSF really helps us remain at that cutting edge.”

Hartzell said hosting the center will not only revolutionize the potential for research, which often relies on computation only possible on a supercomputer, but it will also make the university more competitive in recruiting faculty members and graduate students.

“It’s an important tool, not only for…