The University of Illinois says Seattle-based Cray Inc will take over construction of the stalled USD 300 million Blue Waters supercomputer project, three months after IBM pulled out citing cost and technical concerns.

Cray expects to have the computer online next year, keeping the project, which is being primarily paid for by the National Science Foundation, on track to finish on time.

"We clearly had to do it real quickly," said Thom Dunning, the director of the school's National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

"NSF's goal was to keep the project on track as much as it possibly could be."

The cost and financing will stay essentially the same, Cray CEO Peter Ungara said.

The NSF will provide just over USD 200 million with the remaining USD 100 million coming from the university and the state of Illinois.

Cray will be paid USD 188 million, the equivalent of about half of its total revenue from its most recent fiscal year.

"This is a transformational contract for the company," Ungara said. "It's a very big deal for us. It's a huge contract based on the size of the company and we couldn't be more excited about it."

The design and scope of what Blue Waters should be able to do in the years ahead will change, he said.

Once completed, the supercomputer will be used for a range of projects, including the study of how tornadoes are formed and how viruses invade cells.