The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) will house one of the world's largest supercomputers and it is helping lure top world researchers. The KAUST is due to open next year on the Red Sea coast near Jeddah. Inside the campus, male and female students will be able to mingle freely, contrary to strict gender segregation enforced in most of the country. The university is part of a series of reforms by King Abdullah aiming to open the country up. “The supercomputer is the cornerstone of this knowledge-based economy that we are seeking,” said Majid Al-Ghaslan, in charge of the acquisition, design and development of the “Shaheen” supercomputer. Named after the peregrine falcon, which reaches speeds of up to 340 km per hour, Shaheen is expected to reach 222 teraflops, a measure equalling a trillion floating point operations per second, Ghaslan said. This will make it sixth most powerful computer in the world. Shaheen will be able to simulate the Red Sea environment and model oil fields in three dimensions. “KAUST is a remarkable addition to the world's resources in high-end computing,” said David Keyes, Chair of the Mathematical and Computer Sciences and Engineering Division, who is moving from Columbia University. “The machine that is being purchased here is one of the main attractions to me,” he said. The supercomputer will be used by KAUST and its partners including Cornell University, the University of Oxford, Stanford University, and Texas A&M University. – Reuters __
