The University of California High Performance Astrocomputing Center (UCHPAC) is a world-class research facility dedicated to the development and application of advanced computing techniques in astrophysics and related fields. The center is located at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and is jointly operated by UCSC and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
UCHPAC was established in 2006 with seed funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. The center’s mission is to enable ground-based and space-borne astronomical observations through computation, by developing new algorithms, software tools, and hardware infrastructure; training users in their effective use; and disseminating results broadly. UCHPAC has made significant contributions to a number of major astronomical projects, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
UCHPAC is one of three NSF centers for High Performance Computing in Astronomy & Astrophysics, along with the Center for Computational Astrophysics at Carnegie Mellon University/Princeton University/University of Washington and the Amherst Center for Extended Scientific Computing. These centers are supported by NSF’s AST Division under cooperative agreement AST-0941373.