An OU supercomputer was recently ranked as one of the 100 most powerful supercomputers in the world and 14th among supercomputers from U.S. academic institutions.

Top 500 Supercomputer Sites, a supercomputer ranking organization, listed the OU supercomputer, dubbed “Sooner,” as 91st in the world. This ranking puts it as the second most powerful supercomputer in the Big 12 Conference, behind a University of Texas supercomputer, which ranked 6th on the list.

Nicholas Key, OU Information Technology creative ambassador, said the new supercomputer, which OU faculty and students began using in August, is the second OU supercomputer to be ranked in the top 100.

In 2005, the previous supercomputer, dubbed “Top Dawg,” was 51 on the list, Key said. But since then, several other academic institutions have implemented supercomputing programs, so there are more players on the field.

Sooner is five times faster and its memory is four times larger than Top Dawg’s, said Henry Neeman, director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research.

“Sooner is the largest supercomputer in the history of Oklahoma,” Neeman said.

The supercomputer can perform more than 34 trillion calculations per second, he said, and about 25 departments use it, including many science, engineering and medicine departments.

Key said the supercomputer helps OU recruit faculty members whom they know can come to OU and either continue or improve their research.

Neeman said the weather forecasting and high energy physics departments are the two largest users of the supercomputer.

He said there are three primary uses for the supercomputer, including simulation, visualization and data mining.

Simulation allows researchers to digitally recreate weather conditions to understand how weather works, without physically experiencing the conditions.

“The simulation allows me to walk around in a virtual tornado, so I don’t have to walk around in a real one,” Neeman said.

Visualization allows researchers to convert numbers into pictures and movies, Neeman said.

Neeman defined data mining as spotting patterns within a large amount of data. Researchers use this function to pinpoint leads to potential cures for diseases, such as Alzheimer’s Disease.

Ralph Wheeler, a chemistry and biochemistry professor, said he is currently using the supercomputer for a project that involves predicting the structure of folding proteins, which causes diseases.

“If you can understand why they fold incorrectly, you can develop drugs that help them refold correctly,” Wheeler said.

Using this new, more powerful supercomputer allows Wheeler and OU graduate students working on the folding proteins project to conduct multiple calculations at the same time. Wheeler said calculations that previously would have taken a month now can be performed in less than a week.

“It multiplies the speed of our calculations many-fold,” he said.

He also said the supercomputer helps his department have more opportunities to receive grants and funding because it proves the grant is serious in its intent.

“One of the major positives for the university, as far as supercomputing is concerned, is in government grants,” Key said.