Massive computing effort to evaluate national hydrological
models  University Park, Pa. — A team of Penn State civil
engineers has received one of the largest single-year
allocations of supercomputing hours made for 2010.  The
engineers, led by Patrick Reed, associate professor of civil
engineering, recently received 6 million hours on a large-scale
supercomputing system for their project titled "Massively
Parallel Simulation and Evaluation of Hydrologic Monitoring,
Prediction and Management Systems Under Uncertainty."  According
to Reed, researchers can routinely use thousands of hours of
computational time on supercomputers to solve complex problems.
"Once you go up and towards a million hours, you need special
access," he said.  Reed's team will utilize the Texas Advanced
Computing Center's Ranger system at the University of Texas at
Austin. "The six million service units represent one of the
largest allocation blocks they will give," he explained. "For us
to get this, we had to compete nationally."  Reed