The steady growth continued into 1998, to the extent that the Center began an expansion into ab adjoining bay of the Galles building that added a new visualization laboratory, workshop, seminar and meeting rooms and office spaces. Work on the expansion began in late November 1998 and was completed in April 1999, but not before changes were made to the original expansion to accommodate a new type of supercomputing system that would be added to the Center s resources. The cluster, called Roadrunner , was unveiled in April 1999 in a ceremony that included Senator Pete Domenici. Roadrunner is the first production research supercomputer of its kind, and became a supernode of the Alliance s National Technology Grid. Over 125 participants locally and 100 people at distributed sites at universities across the country, watched the unveiling of the NCSA Access Grid.
Participants are able to share ideas in a unique collaborative setting.
The Access Grid has since been expanded to well over 50 sites across the country. The Center has become nationally recognized for the development and deployment of advanced high performance computing systems and research in applications as diverse as art and engineering.