Scientific Computing Center

The Information Technology Center of KIT - center for data-intensive computing and the analysis of large-scale data with high national and international visibility as well as an innovative and agile IT service provider at KIT.

SCC was founded in 2008 as a merger of the data centres of the University of Karlsruhe and the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.

Brief profile

Who are we?

A central scientific institution at KIT and center for data-intensive computing and the analysis of large-scale data with high national and international visibility as well as an innovative and agile IT service provider at KIT - in short, the Information Technology Center of KIT.

Doing what?

We research, teach and create innovations in the fields of supercomputing, big data and secure IT federations. We operate large-scale research facilities and provide basic central IT services and enterprise applications.

What needs do we address?

SCC meets the needs of computational science and engineering as well as data-intensive science for users at KIT, federal state, national and international level.

SCC

On February 22, 2008, the Scientific Computing Center (SCC) was officially founded. It is the result of the merger of the Computing Centre of the University of Karlsruhe (URZ) and the Institute for Scientific Computing (IWR) of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. Since its very beginnings, the SCC has consistently interlinked research and services in such a way that findings from research are incorporated into the design and development of its IT services and infrastructure and, conversely, research benefits from the close integration.

Today, SCC positions itself as a center for data-intensive computing and the analysis of large-scale data with high national and international visibility as well as an innovative and agile IT service provider for KIT and external partners. From September 2017, the merger of the Administration IT service department of KIT and SCC became operational, so that the range of tasks was expanded to include further important topics.

Spectrum of tasks

SCC is a central scientific institution of the KIT in connection with tasks in research, teaching and innovation and provides comprehensive services within KIT and for external partners. These tasks are concrete:

Research and development in the fields of scientific computing and data analysis, management of large-scale research data and data-intensive computing as well as security in IT federations
Operation of the ICT infrastructure and provision of the basic IT equipment of KIT in conjunction with other service providers and system operators in the organisational units of KIT as part of a cooperative provider system
Development and deployment of IT application systems, management of application software, training of users and administrators as well as end device support
Operation of large-scale facilities for scientific high-performance computing and data-intensive sciences within the framework of secure IT federations

SCC regularly informs about news on research and projects, services and innovation, study and knowledge transfer under News and in the SCC News.

New name for the SCC

The name Steinbuch Centre for Computing, which the SCC bore from 2008 until the end of 2023, commemorated the Karlsruhe professor Karl Steinbuch, who introduced the term "computer science" into the German language in 1957. In the meantime, new findings on Steinbuch's biography have shown that Karl Steinbuch identified with unacceptable acts of war even as a young man during the Nazi era. KIT therefore decided to change the name at the end of 2023.