"Petascale" refers to computing and data in the quadrillions, like the more than 11 quadrillion calculations Blue Waters will be able to perform and the more than 380 quadrillion bytes that will be available in NCSA's new tape archive.

In scientific notation, 1 quadrillion is 10 to the 15th (10^15). So on 10.15 (October 15) NCSA will celebrate PETASCALE DAY! We've planned a variety of informative and fun activities, and we hope you will join us.

For a list of scheduled events, visit http://petascale.ncsa.illinois.edu/.