UF researchers can crunch calculations instantly thanks to a donation from IBM.
The IBM partnership and donation of a PureData Analytics system was announced at the Fall 2014 Research Computing Day on Tuesday.
UF is the only university in Florida to have the $500,000 system, which analyzes large data.
The PureData Analytics system optimizes hundreds of millions of records to create patterns and answer questions faster.
With PureData Analytics, researchers can do queries of 10 to 100 million records in three seconds, versus the 27 hours it would have normally taken, said Elias Eldayrie, vice president and chief information officer of UF Information Technology.
“IBM recognized our drive for preeminence,” Eldayrie said. “And this latest donation by IBM will be one more tool added to the toolkit that we make available to our staff.”
Erik Deumens, UFIT director of research and computing, said this will make a big impact on the university, adding another building block to the goal of becoming a top-10 public university.
IBM chose to give UF the donation after seeing its data advances in 2013.
The Data Center was built for $15 million and houses the $3.4 million HiPerGator, the most powerful supercomputer in Florida.
With HiPerGator, faculty can already analyze their research and findings at faster speeds. HiPerGator works at 150 trillion calculations per second, according to UF.
Data is processed faster, allowing faculty to analyze research and move or share findings with top institutions around the world.
The Internet2 Innovation Platform, an exclusive high-speed information highway, also put UF on the map, Deumens said.
“The donation complements what we have,” Deumens said. “It becomes an extra tool for our researchers to get exciting work done.”
Universities and young researchers play a huge role in the creation of new data, said Sri Srinivasan, vice president and general manager for IBM’s big data platform.
“This is the next big phenomenon — there is a big tsunami of data coming in,” Srinivasan said. “As long as you have the data, you can play with it and create insight.”
The system was installed in the UF East Campus Data Center this summer and is now ready for use.
Eldayrie said this technology’s use will span all fields, from medical to engineering to the humanities.
“This is going to set the drive to reach for the top,” he said. “It’s great to be a Florida Gator.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 9/24/2014. Last updated on 9/24/2014 9:41 p.m.]
