Supercomputer status
The computing capacity at NCAR, as shown
by recent increases in the center's peak capacity (in teraflops), allows
NCAR scientists to develop, test, and release updated versions of the WRF
and CCSM models. CCSM version 3 was used to provide climate simulations to
the IPCC AR4, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2007. With
anticipated increases in computational capability at NCAR, activities are
underway to build and test CCSM version 4 for participation in the 2010-2011
IPCC AR5.
During the third quarter of FY2008, CISL deployed the second phase of
hardware of the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation
(ICESS) contract with IBM. The new supercomputer bluefire is based on the
IBM POWER6 dual-core processor and the commodity Infiniband Switch
communication technology.
The deployment of bluefire nearly tripled the high-end computing capacity available at NCAR. The IBM POWER5+ system blueice, which was the first phase of ICESS hardware installed and in operation since mid-FY2007, was decommissioned in July 2008. The availability of bluefire is consistent with CISL's strategic plan to significantly enhance the high-end computational environment at NCAR during FY2008, and it upgraded the production cyberinfrastructure available to the university, NCAR, and Climate Systems Laboratory (CSL) communities served by CISL.
During the first quarter of FY2009, priority access to bluefire will be given to seven Accelerated Scientific Discovery projects that require large numbers of processors and long periods of computational residency time to satisfy ambitious scientific goals. Nearly 40% of bluefire -- 1,600 processors -- will be devoted to these ASD projects selected from the NSF GEO/ATM community. Results from using this amount of computing capability and capacity devoted to several grand challenge problems were demonstrated during the Breakthrough Science program in FY2007. This allows scientists to simulate and analyze problems requiring computing resources not usually available within NCAR's production environment.
During FY2008, the power constraints within the NCAR computing facility required CISL to decommission the IBM POWER5 system bluevista and the IBM POWER5+ system blueice to supply sufficient electrical capacity for bluefire. The deployment of bluefire allows CISL to meet the continuing needs and requirements of the scientific community for computationally expensive endeavors, such as preparation for the IPCC AR-5 climate simulations with the Community Climate System Model Version 4 (CCSM4), which is currently under development. The computing capacity available for scientific research will remain level during FY2009.
This work aligns with the NCAR strategic priority of "Enhancing capability and capacity of NCAR supercomputing" and is supported by NSF Core funds, including CSL funding."