Tulsa supercomputer aimed at providing competitive advantage

TULSA — The big truck that pulled up to city hall last week unloaded a massive amount of computer servers and other technical equipment.

But Barry Davis, chairman of the Oklahoma Innovation Institute, said he saw something different.

“When I saw the trailer, I said, ‘Here comes the future of Tulsa.'”

The equipment will be assembled to create the Tandy Community Supercomputer, a massively powerful machine that can be used by local universities, corporations, small businesses and entrepreneurs.

After a period of assembly, configuration and testing, the supercomputer — thought to be the first community supercomputer of its kind — will be ready for public use in May.

Davis said the supercomputer will make it much less expensive for smaller businesses to process large amounts of data in a short amount of time, giving local entities a competitive advantage.

“We believe that Tulsa can be a technological leader in the 21st century, and we feel this will have an important impact on Tulsa's future growth,” Davis said.

David Greer, executive director of the Oklahoma Innovation Institute, said researchers at the University of Tulsa and the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa who are developing a next-generation antenna already have competitive plans in place for the supercomputer. They suspect researchers at another university are also developing something similar, so the Tulsa researchers hope the extra computational power will allow them to speed up their research and bring it to market first.