The mission of the High Performance Computing (HPC) Group at the Texas Advanced Computing Center is to accelerate the capabilities of computational researchers through the application of HPC systems, software, and expertise. The activities of the HPC Group include: providing consulting and training for users of TACC's HPC systems; installing software to help these researchers use these systems; evaluating new HPC architectures for potential value to TACC users; and conducting research and development activities to develop new programming techniques, technologies, and algorithms to help researchers use these systems most effectively. The HPC Group comprises computational scientists with PhDs in a variety of backgrounds, all of whom participate in both support and R&D activities to carry out the HPC group mission.

The HPC Group has several important projects currently in progress. TACC HPC Group staff provide support and collaborate with Department of Defense (DoD) researchers in Vicksburg, MS and Monterey, CA under the High Performance Computing Modernization Office (HPCMO) Programming Environments & Training (PET) Program to help improve the state of weather and ocean forecasting models. HPC Group staff are evaluating the performance characteristics of HPC architectures, parallel programming tools, and parallel I/O systems for clusters. The group is also preparing new training materials and technical documentation on portable performance programming to help researchers develop applications that achieve excellent sustained performance on a variety of computing architectures, which is especially important as computing systems become more interconnected in the emerging computational Grid.