The University of Houston’s Center for Advanced Computing and Data Science (CACDS) recently added Sabine to its resource pool of public computing systems and storage and is now available for use on campus. With the computing power equivalent to 2,700 home office PCs, Sabine greatly surpasses its predecessor, Opuntia.

All UH researchers have free access to Sabine which is proving to be quite useful to a variety of scientific and engineering projects around campus. Furthermore, with technology advancing at the speed of light, it’s critical for computing systems to remain current.

“Hardware ages very quickly and in order for the university to stay current and on the cutting-edge of research, we must update our systems frequently,” said Peggy Lindner, research assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and CACDS staff member. “With Sabine’s added computational power, researchers can obtain results much faster and the system will help them answer their research questions,” she said.

Currently, researchers in the College of Engineering are using Sabine to further their work with NASA to develop safer, lighter and more powerful batteries for the international space station, satellites, telescopes, rovers and more. Also, Sabine is helping the researchers to discover and design new materials for automotive catalytic converters to help car and truck makers produce more efficient and economically friendly engines.

Lars Grabow, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and his student, Hari Thirumalai are quite pleased and excited about the high performance of the Sabine computing system.

“Through the new system, we retrieve more accurate data quicker,” said Thirumalai. “Not only is the data better, but it’s more meaningful to solving our most complex problems. My only complaint about Sabine is we’re unable to hog it all to ourselves,” he said.

The new Sabine computer system is housed in the Research Computing and Data Center (RCDC) located in the new Multidisciplinary Research and Engineering (MREB) building and is available through the CACDS.

CACDS also offers resources to researchers who require large-scale data analysis for projects. They also offer training services to researchers and students to support further education and knowledge in high-functioning computing.

For more information on Sabine.