The National Science Foundation gave the University of Tennessee $65 million to put together the state-of-the-art Kraken supercomputer.

The supercomputer will be built at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and will increase the computational power of the TeraGrid, "the world's largest, most powerful and comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research," as the foundation described it.

"Like the gargantuan sea monsters Kraken, which inspired the naming of this supercomputer, the possibilities in scientific and engineering advances it enables are enormous, limited only by the confines of human imagination and vision beyond the frontiers of science," said Arden L. Bement, director at the National Science Foundation.

The $65 million grant is the largest ever received by the University of Tennessee. UT will collaborate at this project with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the project leader was designated Thomas Zacharia, vice president for science and technology at UT.

Half of the grant will go to the manufacturing of the state-of-the-art computer, while the other half will be used for its operation and upkeep for the next five years.

The University of Tennessee Media Relations said the Kraken supercomputer will be able to make about 1,000 trillion calculations per second, a feature that would provide the researchers with the tool needed to carry out transformational research in several of fields.

Using the Kraken supercomputer, researchers will be able to simulate the formation of supernova more realistically, simulate the evolution of the galaxy and black hole mergers and the effect of the pollution and the list of examples continues.

The supercomputer will boost research in many other fields such as chemistry, biochemistry, particle physics and computer science.