The Ames Laboratory recently obtained the fastest computer in Iowa and one of the 300 fastest computers in the world.

The supercomputer, a 256-node Intel Paragon, will be used for research and educational purposes and was purchased for the price of shipping and installation from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

“When the Intel Paragon was new, it was the world’s fastest computer,” said Bruce Harmon, deputy director of the Ames Laboratory. “We purchased a quarter of the total computer from Oak Ridge.”

Purchased in August of this year, the computer has been operating for the past three months in the basement of Durham Center. Harmon hopes to use the Paragon for another year or two, but it will probably be too slow for their needs after that.

“The computer is starting to show its age, but we will take advantage of it while we have it,” said Dave Turner, assistant professor in physics and astronomy.

The Ames Laboratory purchased the computer because it was in need of a high-performance computer for simulations and research, said David Halstead, associate scientist at the Ames Laboratory.

“The supercomputer is used for various calculations and simulations of material properties, understanding them and how they work for research purposes,” Harmon said.

According to an Ames Laboratory press release, the Paragon will be used to simulate the movement of electronic waves through different types of media and to determine the melting temperatures of materials with melting points that are so hot they can not be determined in a laboratory.

Only a quarter of the whole Paragon was purchased because the Ames Laboratory felt it was all they needed for their purposes.

“The whole computer is not as reliable as the fourth we bought,” Harmon said. “Also, by only using a fourth, we were able to purchase spare parts for the computer. Maintenance fees are not necessary because we will use local maintenance people to keep the computer running.”

When Oak Ridge was getting rid of the computer to buy a newer one, it agreed to sell it to Iowa State for the shipping cost of about $14,000.

When built in 1994, the Paragon was one of the first supercomputers to feature a massive parallel processor, Harmon said. A parallel processor allows a computer to take a task and split it into pieces that can be performed simultaneously.

Most current supercomputers now use parallel processing, and the labeling of a computer as a supercomputer is changing, Halstead said.

“Today’s definition of a supercomputer is a fuzzy one because desktop computers of today were considered ‘super’ five years ago,” he said.