The supercomputer, known as the Palmetto Cluster, is housed at Clemson's Information Technology Center and comprises 512 Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers with Intel Quad-Core processors. Dell has worked with researchers at the university to build the cluster, currently benchmarked at 31 teraflops (TF), which means it can perform more than 31 trillion operations in one second, and is expected to grow to a goal of 100 TF.

"The Palmetto Cluster is a shared computing infrastructure offering enhanced computational research capabilities that will benefit our entire research community", stated Jim Bottum, Clemson's vice provost and chief information officer. "A system of this class from Dell, combined with quality research faculty, highly-trained support staff and world-class operations, is providing Clemson with a cyberinfrastructure for the future."

The research enabled by the Palmetto Cluster already covers a wide range of disciplines, from cross-layer protocol design of wireless communication networks to simulations in molecular dynamics and developmental studies with children.

"Clemson University has made a commitment to providing its researchers the technology infrastructure they need to reach new academic frontiers", stated John Mullen, Dell vice president of higher education. "Dell clusters deliver the simplicity and value of industry-standard computing while still providing exceptional performance in a highly demanding environment."