U of Texas at Austin Gets Millions for Computer Research and Development

Neo-Whigs are setting up a capital of sorts in central Texas.

The Association of American Universities, a consortium of the country's most prestigious research institutions, has announced that the National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Texas at Austin $479 million of their 2024 budget of $11.355 billion to build an advanced computing facility, as below from their website.

NSF Investing Millions to Build New Advanced Computing Facility at UT Austin

The National Science Foundation is investing $457 million to build a Leadership-Class Computing Facility (LCCF) at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the NSF, the facility “is expected to revolutionize computational research across multiple subjects in science and engineering” and will “deploy the largest academic supercomputer dedicated to open-scientific research in the NSF portfolio” when it becomes operational in 2026.

"UT and TACC have long been recognized as the home of one of the nation's leading academic supercomputing centers, which enables and accelerates discovery that changes the world. The creation of this new facility with NSF means continued excellence and reliability for top researchers from across the country,” said UT Austin President Jay Hartzell. According to NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, the “facility will provide the computational resources necessary to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time, enabling researchers to push the boundaries of what is possible.”

Per the NSF, the project “also includes a wide range of education and public outreach plans to grow the future science and engineering workforce and ensure that the nation benefits from access to the facility.”

Additionally, in an apparently unrelated development, the celebrated Defense Advanced Research Project Agency or DARPA, the federal outfit that funds the research and development of expensive and esoteric items that may be useful to the military, has given, through its Next Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing Program, $840 million to the Texas Institute for Electronics, also a part of the University of Texas at Austin. The Texas State Legislature had already given TIE $552 million to modernize current fabrication facilities.

Ergo, the educational and research environment of the Texas hill country is awash in government funds to further shrink the size and expand the capabilities of computer hardware. The NSF National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network also funds four programs at U of T, Austin, the Micro-electronics Research Center, Texas Material Institute, the Center for Nano and Molecular Sciences and the Nano Manufacturing System Center.

What does all this mean? Of course one result is that the Austin campus and surrounding area will be even more of a boom town than it has been, construction of facilities will mean an influx of thousands of grubby, ill-mannered blue collar pipefitters  and electricians, a subsequent increase in rental rates and more sales of new 4-wheel drive pick-ups.

But what will be the long term effect? How much can computer components be shrunk in practical terms and how much more can their ability to increase the speed of mathematical processes, which is what they actually do, be put to use in every day life? Is there some endpoint to this?

What's the opinion of the general population on this situation, since, theoretically, they are financing it? Of course tax receipts and sales of treasury bills won't cover the expenses either. Most of the federal budget is composed of imaginary money created on keyboards. Will US funds always and forever be accepted by everyone for the necessities?

As an aside, an interesting trend is taking place. First came "podcasts", internet information delivered by the spoken word. Now articles on internationally focused websites like the BBC, Deutsche Welle, CBC and others can be heard as well as read. This could be the result of many things but one of them might well be a decrease in literacy among the target audience. Every normal person can speak and understand their native language but aren't necessarily literate. Maybe the oral option is better than orthography on a smart phone but still, the printed word is there to stay, the sound disappears instantly. The adoption of the written word was more earthshaking than Bill Gates' Microsoft.