A couple of dozen people donned their dark Men in Black-style 3-D glasses Monday at Santa Fe Community College and caught a glimpse of New Mexico's high-tech future.

Its name is Encanto, and it is one of the world's fastest supercomputers, built with New Mexico tax dollars and the promise of public access.

The promise began to come true Monday afternoon, when Gov. Bill Richardson unveiled the first eight public "gateway" sites around the state, including Santa Fe Community College, that will link to Encanto. Another 25 public sites are expected to go online by March.

In the near future, digital film students at Santa Fe Community College will tap into Encanto to create their own 3-D mega hits, à la Avatar. Nursing students and emergency medical technicians in training at the college could practice handling medical emergencies using a new 3-D program. And engineering, architecture and archaeology students will soon be able to create and test multidimensional models.

Richardson discussed Encanto's capabilities via a videoconference from the Roundhouse, watched simultaneously on large, high-definition screens at all eight sites. "We're bringing the highest level of supercomputing to every corner of the state, giving New Mexicans the opportunity to tap into its remarkable educational and economic possibilities," Richardson said.

Al Reed, dean of Business and Applied Technologies at Santa Fe Community College, is excited about the possibilities for high-tech training and collaboration through Encanto. He worked with the supercomputing team for two years to make the college one of the test sites. "This gives students across the state greater access to master professors," Reed said.

The 62-inch, high-definition screens, other computer equipment and upgraded fiber-optic connections were among the other benefits of becoming a gateway site.

Sheila Ortego, the college's president, also is looking forward to how Encanto will help student learn the high-tech skills needed for jobs in a variety of fields. "If our students don't have the skills, they won't get hired," Ortego said.

Encanto, housed at Intel in Rio Rancho, was unveiled two years ago. The state Legislature appropriated $11 million to build the computer and set aside another $3 million to fund the gateway sites. Encanto, which can whiz through 172 trillion calculations per second, is the fastest publicly available supercomputer in the world, said Thomas Bowles, Richardson's science adviser. (In the last year, Encanto fell from 12th to 27th fastest in the world among all supercomputers, public and private.)

Encanto's memory bank is large enough to store the entire Library of Congress three times over, Bowles said.

The supercomputer is managed by the New Mexico Computing Applications Center. Partners at the center are The University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University, New Mexico Tech and Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

Each gateway site will receive 30 computers. Santa Fe Community College's computers had not arrived Monday. Reed hopes they'll be set up within a month and students will be able to start using programs on the supercomputer after spring break.

The first eight gateway sites are at several of the state's major universities, plus San Juan College in Farmington and at the Capitol. Other sites to open in coming months include UNM branch campuses, the College of Santa Fe, New Mexico Highlands University, the Institute of American Indian Arts and New Mexico Military Institute.

One of the issues still to be settled with Encanto is what kind of software will be available. The program has limited funds to purchase software that will be shared by all the sites' users. "The challenge isn't technical," Bowles said. "It is that this is a new collaborative site. How do you get 33 sites agreeing on what should go on it? We can't satisfy the needs of every single person in the state."

Even a supercomputer has its limits.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.