The supercluster, which has yet to be named, will join the center s Roadrunner computer supercluster, which also is nationally recognized. It s going to be about 10 times faster than the current Roadrunner, Gilfeather said. The average hard drive has about two gigabytes of hard disk space, and a terabyte holds about 1,000 gigabytes. That means the supercluster will offer the hard disk space of about 1,250 average computers combined. Supercluster computers are, in essence, a set of interconnected personal computers, Gilfeather said.
Users can harness the muscle of the unified computers and operate the cluster like a supercomputer.
Gilfeather said superclusters cost one-third of the price of supercomputers, such as IBMs or SGIs, and can be much more easily upgraded. The center s Roadrunner supercluster, which was set up in March of last year, is working at full capacity, he said. It s used 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Gilfeather said. We have about 100 using it. Over half of those people are from outside New Mexico.