Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Internet Exchange Contracts with NOAA for $2.58M
PITTSBURGH, January 24, 2011 — The Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX), operated and managed by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, has contracted with NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to provide a high-speed optical fiber connection to NOAA’s planned Environmental Security Computing Center (ESCC) in Fairmont, West Virginia.
The new center, to be located at the at I-79 Technology Park Research Center in Fairmont, will house a supercomputing system, expected to be online by late 2011, to meet national weather forecasting and climate modeling goals outlined in NOAA’s “High Performance Computing Strategic Plan 2011-2015.” 3ROX will provide connectivity to ESCC by providing new network infrastructure between PSC and the Fairmont site. The connection to ESCC will have 10 Gigabit per second capability, and will allow ESCC access to national and international research networks such as Internet2 and National LambdaRail.
“We expect the infrastructure to be put in place by March 2011,” said Wendy Huntoon, PSC director of networking, “and anticipate that we will be able to leverage it to upgrade existing connectivity to West Virginia University (currently 155 megabits per second).”
More information about 3ROX: http://www.3rox.net