Education & Outreach

A supercomputer is similar to a personal or notebook computer, but far more powerful. For example, TACC’s largest supercomputer, Ranger, has a peak performance of about 504 trillion

operations per second, which is about 10 to 100,000 times more powerful than a laptop computer. Ranger also rapidly reads and writes data to hard disks, holding several thousand times more data than a notebook computer. The Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin has several supercomputers, which are used by researchers in Texas and around the world. See our list of systems here.

People working in many kinds of careers and industry use advanced computing systems to solve problems that impact our lives everyday, including scientists, artists, engineers, and medical and health professionals, among many others. Supercomputers are used in many industries, including manufacturing, transportation, petroleum, weather forecasting, and emergency response services…to name just a few!

Accurately forecast global and local weather.
Plan a city’s emergency response to flooding (right down to the city block).
Design and test many forms of transportation, including cars, busses, trains, and airplanes.
Formulate medication and look inside the human body (MRI, PET, CT).
Create imaginative and realistic animation. Shrek and Cars are good examples.
Manufacture and package consumer goods like diapers, detergent, and even potato chips!

However, a supercomputer is only one element of an advanced computing center. A diverse team of scientists and professionals make an advanced computing center work and serve researchers across many areas of research. That’s what we do here at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. We invite you to explore all that TACC has to offer for students, educators, and the local community!

TACC staff produce visualizations that are visually evocative and scientifically accurate. Researchers depend on visualizations to explore and interact with large, complicated data sets. Visit our Scientific Visualization Gallery to see some of the visualizations that have been created.

TACC and The University of Texas at Austin teach a four-course scientific computing curriculum for graduate students. Find out about these courses and download the curriculum materials to build your own courses.

Have you ever seen a Texas-sized supercomputer or wonder how they work? TACC welcomes K-12 school groups, after-school programs, and other informal learning organizations of all ages to tour our facilities. Please contact Rebeka Villarreal-Martinez to organize a tour.

Our community programs aim to inform the public of the importance and value of advanced computing technologies and the career opportunities available in the field. In addition, TACC staff actively support our community by donating their time to various local community events and programs. Please contact Brad Armosky for more information.

The Austin Forum is the center’s community speaker series. On the first Wednesday of each month, TACC hosts speakers from different fields to engage the community on topics on science and technology and their impact on society. Join us at an upcoming Forum!

The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are hosting a new lecture series featuring national authorities on ultrascale scientific simulation.

The proliferation and accessibility of massive online databases of textual, visual and aural resources in the study of history, languages, civilizations and cultures have brought new complexity to research in these fields. More than ever before, advanced computational systems, tools and techniques are required to visualize, analyze and manage archival resources.