The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin as the nation’s Leadership-Class Computing Facility (LCCF). This designation, along with an initial investment of $457 million for construction, aims to revolutionize America's computational research over the next decade. The NSF's investment builds on TACC’s 20 years of providing advanced computing resources to the open science community and ensures continuity and sustainability in various scientific fields.
"We are experiencing a trend where an exponentially increasing number of problems can be solved by computing in general and artificial intelligence in particular. These are great strengths of our University. This investment will enable UT to make even greater impacts by addressing more challenges using AI, computational science, and other disciplines," said President Jay Hartzell. "We are excited about the privilege to continue in our role as an enabler of work that serves and improves society, and we are grateful to NSF and to our longtime partner in advanced computing, Dell Technologies. We are especially grateful to Congressman John Carter for his leadership in securing this funding."
UT and TACC have long been recognized as leading academic supercomputing centers. UT researchers have used these resources to model the coronavirus during the early stages of the pandemic, confirm the existence of gravitational waves, and enhance storm surge forecasts during hurricanes. Earlier this year, UT launched the Center for Generative AI with a new GPU computing cluster among the largest in academia. Additionally, TACC’s Frontera and Lonestar6 were among six supercomputers selected for NSF’s National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource pilot.
The partnership aligns with UT’s 10-year strategic plan to become a high-impact public research university with a focus on Technology and Society as one of three primary research areas. UT has declared 2024 as its “Year of AI.”
Computation through large-scale simulation, data analysis, and artificial intelligence applications is essential across many research areas. LCCF is envisioned as a distributed computational facility enabling transformative discoveries across broad classes of science and engineering applications. The project includes education and public outreach plans aimed at growing the future science and engineering workforce.
"LCCF represents a pivotal step forward in our mission to support transformative research across all fields of science and engineering," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "This facility will provide the computational resources necessary to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time, enabling researchers to push the boundaries of what is possible."
"In recognition of the ubiquitous importance of computing across the sciences, NSF has made large-scale investments in supercomputing for nearly four decades," said Dan Stanzione, executive director of TACC and principal investigator for the new facility. "With the rise of AI, computing's role in scientific discovery has expanded even more widely. This new facility represents a sea change in how NSF invests in large-scale computing — a sustained investment matching other large scientific instruments' lifetimes."
LCCF is expected to begin operations during 2026 with Horizon, projected as the largest academic supercomputer dedicated to open-scientific research within NSF's portfolio. Horizon will offer a tenfold performance improvement over Frontera for simulations while providing more than 100 times improvement for AI applications.
In addition to hardware advancements like specialized accelerators for AI research and general-purpose processors for diverse simulation needs, LCCF will offer extensive data storage systems and interactive computing capabilities. Access will be open nationwide through peer-reviewed processes.
Beyond Frontera, currently holding status as the fastest university campus supercomputer, TACC operates several high-performance systems that process various data types collaboratively with national partners.
The LCCF will collaborate with four distributed science centers: Atlanta University Center Consortium (comprising Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine), National Center for Supercomputing Applications at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University; San Diego Supercomputer Center at University of California San Diego.
These partnerships aim to expand LCCF's geographical footprint ensuring nationwide access while leveraging expertise within America’s cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. Additionally contributing are The Ohio State University advancing high-performance networking software stacks alongside Cornell University's efforts toward workforce development.