Shaheen (supercomputer)

Shaheen (supercomputer)

Shaheen consists primarily of a 16-rack IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer owned and operated by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Built in partnership with IBM, Shaheen is intended to enable KAUST Faculty and Partners to research both large- and small-scale projects, from inception to realization.

Shaheen, named after the Peregrine Falcon, is the largest and most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East and is intended to grow into a petascale facility by the year 2011, Originally built at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, Shaheen was moved to KAUST in mid-2009.

The father of Shaheen is Majid Alghaslan, KAUST's founding interim chief information officer and the University's leader in the acquisition, design, and development of the Shaheen supercomputer. Majid was part of the executive founding team for the University and the person who also named the machine