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Media Release
$29 MILLION BOOST FOR AUSTRALIA’S SUPER COMPUTERS
29 April 2003 MIN 690/04
A unique national computing partnership will receive an additional $29 million in Australian Government funding to upgrade its supercomputing capacity to support world-class research in Australia.
The Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) is a collaboration between organisations from every Australian State and the ACT, the majority of Australian universities and the CSIRO.
The funding will be delivered over four years for upgrading supercomputers and supporting new fields of research and builds on the $19.5 million provided by the Australian Government to establish APAC in 2000.
The supercomputers of APAC’s partners around Australia, and APAC’s own national supercomputer at the Australian National University in Canberra (currently ranked 31 in the top 500 in the world) are used for discovering scientific principles in nature.
Supercomputers are now used routinely to design cars, develop materials for sporting equipment, develop new drugs to treat disease, assist with mineral exploration and weather prediction and a wide range of other applications that affect our lives.
Today’s funding announcement is part of a $120 million commitment, through the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative, towards the development of a world class e-research infrastructure to support Australian innovation and research.
Funding for Australia’s e-research infrastructure also comprises:
- approximately $69 million for the Australian Research and Education Network (AREN), which is providing Australian universities (including most regional campuses) one of the fastest and largest optical fibre university communications networks in the world; and
- $22 million for the Australian Research Information Infrastructure Committee (ARIIC), which is developing standards and software to improve access by Australian researchers to sophisticated data repositories all around the world.
Through the Howard Government’s $3 billion science and innovation package, Backing Australia’s Ability, Australian universities are gaining unparalleled computing capacity and critical access to national and global network connections.
Media Contact:
Dr Nelson’s Office: Ross Hampton 0419 484 095
Dept of Education, Science & Training: Dean O'Neil 0423 568 595
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