The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) is a high-performance computing (HPC) and data archival facility located in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is managed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and provides advanced computing services to researchers in the Earth system sciences.NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center commissioned, FY2011 NCAR Annual Report. Retrieved 2012-10-16.
NWSC provides researchers' needs for computing, data analysis, and scientific visualization resources combined with powerful data management capabilities to support finer Earth system model resolution, increased model complexity, better statistics, more predictive power, and longer simulation times.Advancing the geosciences through simulation, FY2010 NCAR Annual Report. Retrieved 2012-12-20.NCAR supercomputer ready for research projects, Wyoming Public Media website. Retrieved 2012-10-16. The data storage and archival facilityData Support for Climate and Weather Research, National Center for Atmospheric Research website. Retrieved 2013-06-12. at NWSC holds unique historical climate records and a wealth of other scientific data.CISL Research Data Archive, NCAR-CISL Research Data Archive website. Retrieved 2013-06-12. Scientists at U.S. universities and research institutions access NWSC resources remotely via the Internet from desktop or laptop computers.
History
The NWSC data center is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the State of Wyoming, and is operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It was created through a partnershipA Public-Private Success Story, Interview, A look at the coalition behind the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center. NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2012-10-16. of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the State of Wyoming, the University of Wyoming, Cheyenne LEADS,The Cheyenne-Laramie County Corporation for Economic Development, Cheyenne LEADS website. Retrieved 2012-06-11. the Wyoming Business Council, and Cheyenne Light Fuel and Power Company (now named Black Hills Corporation). Consistent with NCAR's mission, this supercomputing center is a leader in energy efficiency, incorporating the newest and most efficient designs and technologies available. PlanningEstablishing a Petascale Collaboratory for the Geosciences: Scientific Frontiers, 2005. Ad Hoc Committee and Technical Working Group for a Petascale Collaboratory for the Geosciences. A Report to the Geosciences Community. UCAR/JOSS. 80 pp.Establishing a Petascale Collaboratory for the Geosciences: Technical and Budgetary Prospectus, 2005. Technical Working Group and Ad Hoc Committee for a Petascale Collaboratory for the Geosciences. A Report to the Geosciences Community, UCAR/JOSS. 56 pp. for this data center began in 2003, groundbreakingBreaking Ground on a Groundbreaking Center, NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2012-07-20. at the North Range Business Park in Cheyenne took place in June 2010, and computing operations began in October 2012.Climate change research gets petascale supercomputer, Computerworld website. Retrieved 2012-10-16.
Sustainability and energy efficiency
The facility design is based on modular and expandable spaces that can be adapted for computing system upgrades. Its sustainable design makes it 89% more efficient than a typical data center and up to 10% more efficient than state-of-the-art data centers operating in 2010.Green Technology - Raising the Bar in Data Center Efficiency, NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center website. Retrieved 2013-06-19. Source of these estimates is "Basis of Design," an internal construction planning document by H&L Architecture, California Data Center Design Group, Rumsey Engineering, and RMH Group Inc., dated 2010-02-25.Designing a New Type of Data Center, Data Center Knowledge website. Retrieved 2013-06-19. Almost 92% of the energy it uses goes directly to its core purpose of powering supercomputersGreen Technology – Raising the Bar in Data Center Efficiency, NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center website. Retrieved 2013-06-10. Source of this estimate is "Basis of Design," an internal construction planning document by H&L Architecture, California Data Center Design Group, Rumsey Engineering, and RMH Group Inc., dated 2010-02-25. to enable scientific discovery. Part of its efficiency comes from the regionally integrated design that uses Wyoming's climate to provide natural cooling during 96% of the year and local wind energyHappy Jack Windpower, Project. Duke Energy website. Retrieved 2013-06-19. that supplies at least 10% of its power.NCAR Weather Supercomputer Comes Online, Data Center Knowledge website. Retrieved 2013-06-19. The main energy source used is coal. The NWSC achieved LEED Gold certificationNCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center Fact Sheet, NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2012-10-15.Climate Research Spurred By Green Design of Supercomputing Center, Engineering News Record (ENR) Mountain States website. Retrieved 2013-06-27. for its sustainable design and construction. In 2013 it won first placeWorld-class Supercomputing Center Designed to Achieve 1.08 PUE, 2013 Green Enterprise IT Award Winner, Facility Design-Implementation, Uptime Institute website. Retrieved 2013-06-12. for Facility Design Implementation in the Uptime Institute's Green Enterprise IT awards.First Place: NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center Recognized for Outstanding Design Implementation, NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2013-04-03. This award recognizes pioneering projects and innovations that significantly improve energy productivity and resource use in information technology. In June 2013, the NWSC won the Datacenter DynamicsDatacenterDynamics North American awards ceremony, Datacenter Dynamics website. Retrieved 2013-08-02. North American 'Green' Data Center awardNCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center Wins National Data Center Award, Engineering News Record (ENR) Mountain States website. Retrieved 2013-08-02.NWSC named 'Green' Data Center of the Year, NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2013-08-02. for demonstrated sustainability in the design and operation of facilities.The 'Green' Data Center, Datacenter Dynamics website. Retrieved 2013-08-02.
The center currently has a total of 153,000 square feet with 24,000 square feet of raised floor modules for supercomputing systems in its expandable design.NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center Fact Sheet, NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2012-10-15. It incorporates numerous resource conservation features to reduce its environmental impact. Water consumption at the NWSC is reduced by about 40% compared to traditional designs by using innovative technologies, specialized cooling tower equipment, and low-flow plumbing fixtures. Waste heat from the systems is recycled to pre-heat components in the power plant, to heat the office spaces, and to melt snow and ice on outdoor walkways and rooftops. Windows supply natural light; combined with room occupancy sensors, the building saves 20-30% in lighting and electricity compared to typical office buildings. A building automation system saves energy by continuously optimizing pumps, fans, and controls that heat or cool only occupied areas of the facility. During construction, sustainable practices were used with emphasis on recycled and locally sourced materials.NCAR and the Green Supercomputing Facility of the Future, Reuters website. Retrieved 2012-09-20.First Place: NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center recognized for outstanding design implementation, NCAR-UCAR AtmosNews website. Retrieved 2013-04-20.
Supercomputing resources
NSF grants for computing, data, and scientific visualization resources are allocated to researchers who investigate the Earth system through simulation. The current HPC environment includes two petascale supercomputers, data analysis and visualization servers, an operational weather forecasting system, an experimental supercomputing architecture platform, a centralized file system, a data storage resource, and an archive of historical research data.Statistical Analysis of Massive Data Streams: Proceedings of a Workshop, 2004. The National Academies Press website. Retrieved 2013-06-16. All computing and support systems required for scientific workflows are attached to the shared, high-speed, central file system to improve scientific productivity and reduce costs by analyzing and visualizing their data files in place at the NWSC.New data service speeds the progress of research, FY2010 NCAR Annual Report. Retrieved 2012-12-20.
Supercomputer: Yellowstone
In 2012, the Yellowstone supercomputerYellowstone Supercomputer Sports Massive Xeon E5 Array, Go Parallel website at sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2012-09-01. was installed in the NWSC as its inaugural HPC resource. Yellowstone is an IBM iDataPlexIBM System x iDataPlex dx360 M4, IBM website. Retrieved 2013-06-20. cluster consisted of 72,576 Intel Sandy Bridge EP processor cores in 4,536 16-core nodes, each with 32 gigabytes of memory.Yellowstone , NCAR Computational and Information Systems Laboratory website. Retrieved 2012-11-20. All nodes are interconnected with a full fat tree Mellanox FDR InfiniBand network.System overview , NCAR Computational and Information Systems Laboratory website. Retrieved 2013-06-20. Yellowstone has a peak performance of 1.504 petaflops and has demonstrated a computational capability of 1.2576 petaflops as measured by the High-Performance LINPACK (HPL) benchmark.Yellowstone data-intensive computing environment, FY2012 CISL Annual Report. Retrieved 2012-12-20. It debuted as the world's 13th fastest computerTOP500 List – November 2012 , TOP500 Supercomputer Sites. Retrieved 2012-12-01. in the November 2012 ranking by the TOP500 organization. Also in November 2012, Yellowstone debuted as the 58th most energy efficient supercomputer in the worldThe Green500 List – November 2012 , The Green500 website. Retrieved 2013-06-28. by operating at 875.34 megaflops per watt as ranked by the Green500 organization.
Supercomputer: Cheyenne Becoming operational in 2017, the 5.34-petaflops Cheyenne supercomputer is currently providing more than three times the computational capacity of Yellowstone. Cheyenne is an SGI ICE XA system with 4,032 dual-socket scientific computation nodes running 145,152, 18-core 2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 (Broadwell) processing cores and has 315 terabytes of memory.Cheyenne - SGI ICE XA, Xeon E5-2697v4 18C 2.3GHz, Infiniband EDR, Top500 website. Retrieved 2017-02-28. Interconnecting these nodes is a Mellanox EDR InfiniBand network with 9-D enhanced hypercube topology that performs with a latency of only 0.5 microsecond.Cheyenne: NCAR's Next-Generation Data-Centric Supercomputing Environment , CISL website. Retrieved 2017-02-28. Cheyenne runs the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 operating system.Cheyenne - SGI ICE XA, Xeon E5-2697v4 18C 2.3GHz, Infiniband EDR, Top500 website. Retrieved 2017-02-28. Similar to Yellowstone, Cheyenne's design and configuration will provide balanced I/O and exceptional computational capacity for the data-intensive needs of its user community.Provide Supercomputing Resources, FY2016 CISL Annual Report. Retrieved 2017-02-28. Cheyenne debuted as the world's 20th most powerful computer in the November 2016 Top500 ranking.NCAR Launches Five-Petaflop Supercomputer, Top500 website. Retrieved 2017-02-28.
Cheyenne was scheduled to go offline on December 31, 2023.
Supercomputer: Derecho A new super computer was announced on January 27, 2021, capable of 20 quadrillion calculations per second, said to be 3.5 times faster than the current system in operation at the facility. Scheduled to be operational in early 2022, it officially launched on July 7, 2023.
Derecho is a 19.87 petaflop HPE Cray System. It has 2488 homogenous (CPU) compute nodes and 82 heterogenous (GPU) compute nodes, 382 A100 GPU's, and 692 terabytes of total memory.