The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) broke ground Wednesday to mark the start of construction on a new $30 million facility that will consolidate the bulk of the center's nearly 400 employees under one roof.

"NCSA is a large organization, it's a growing organization," said Charles Zukoski, vice chancellor of research at the University. "Its annual budget has doubled in the last seven years from $40 million a year in 1997 to $85 million in the fiscal year 2003," he said. Zukoski said NCSA has spread out across campus because of its growth. "This is a consolidation that will be important for streamlining their program," he added.

Unlike offices scattered across campus, the new building will foster more collaboration among researchers, said NCSA spokeswoman Tricia Barker.

"They may not have realized the chance to collaborate," Barker said. "This new building will help that."

The new 142,000-square-foot building will house offices, laboratories, conference rooms and a large auditorium. The supercomputers, however, will not be moved from the Advanced Computation Building, Barker said. The machine room that houses the computers has been specifically built with a powerful cooling system to protect the machines from the heat produced by the cluster of servers, she said.

The facility, slated for completion in 2005, will also be one of two buildings anchoring a new information technology quadrangle at the corner of Clark St. and Matthews Ave. in Urbana. State funding for the building was approved last spring.

State Rep. Naomi Jakobsson lauded the efforts of the NCSA and said the building's benefits will extend beyond the University.

"When we invest in something like (the building), that investment is going to turn into more professors doing more research, and it brings in more dollars to the University and to the state," Jakobsson said. "Not only dollars, but more prestige. It doesn't stop here. It benefits the students, and the state of Illinois and the country. These supercomputing systems are even effective across the world."

NCSA was founded in 1986 as part of the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program, using money from the foundation, the state of Illinois and the University.

In 1992, NCSA introduced Mosaic, the first Web browser of its kind and the predecessor of modern browsers.

"The Internet is so ubiquitous and so much a part of modern life, but there really wouldn't be the Internet in the way we know it today without Mosaic," Barker said.

Zukoski said he hopes the building will help NCSA to continue producing cutting-edge technology.

"NCSA has this tradition of leading this country and developing new software packages, new concepts on how to use the grid and new ways of linking hardware so computing just becomes a part of our lives." Zukoski said. "We want NCSA to continue to play that role and grow to provide an even larger impact on our lives. We hope this building will allow them to do that."