UT's Texas Advanced Computing Center shows off its new Stampede 2 supercomputer. (Photo: CBS Austin)

Friday, the University of Texas officially dedicated a new supercomputer, the Stampede 2, the most powerful of any you'll find at a US academic institution. What this system can do in the hands of the researchers who will use it is both breathtaking and lifesaving.

Today VIPs got to see the Stampede 2 in action. This machine has the power of 100,000 desktop PCs. It can do 18 quadrillion calculations per second. A quadrillion is a million billion or 1,000,000,000,000,000 per second.

And that helps speed up projects that involve a lot of data. Tommy Minyard is director of advanced computing systems at UTs Texas Advanced Computing Center. He says, We've been working with the storm prediction teams in Oklahoma where they run simulations on our computers at night so that they can predict what the weather will be for that day."

After the Onion Creek floods in 2014, UT researchers created models that explained what happened. Civil Engineering Professor Davis Maidment explained, As soon as you increase the watershed size you increase the flood risk."

But the faster Stampede 2 lets researchers use the most current data from rain gauges and weather stations and get their results sooner. Minyard adds, So they can put the storm researchers, the guys that are actually chasing the storms, in the appropriate areas where they think the storms are going to arrive, where they're going to form during the day."

The National Science Foundation invested $30 million in building UTs new supercomputer which is open to researchers of all stripes. And since they get their results quicker they can move forward faster. Minyard explains: "It can result in innovations and new technologies that they may not have even thought about."

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