Linda LaBrie, head of SCD's Computer Production Group,
checks bluesky and the NCAR Computing Room environment
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The production supercomputer
environment managed by SCD for NCAR evolved from serial codes running
on single processors to codes that harness the power of multiple CPUs
in cluster systems. In FY2003, SCD more than quadrupled the capacity
of these cluster systems by completing Phase II of the Advanced
Research Computing System (ARCS) and a late-FY2003 augmentation to
that system.
A complete new IBM Cluster 1600 system, named bluesky, was added
to the SCD computational environment in early FY2003. This bluesky
system had a total of 1,216 POWER4 processors and a peak computational
rate of 6.323 teraflops.
Late in FY2003, bluesky was augmented by 12 32-way p690 SMP frames,
adding an additional 384 POWER4 processors and raising the total
peak computational rate of the system to 8.23 teraflops.
The augmentation also increased bluesky's total disk capacity
to 31 terabytes. Bluesky now has 50 POWER4 p690 SMP frames,
making it the single largest system of this type in the world.
The addition of the bluesky system in FY2003 increased both Community
Computing and Climate Simulation Lab resources by a factor of two each.
Initially, the 12 additional bluesky frames will be used to increase
the resource capacity available to Community Climate System Model (CCSM)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) activity.
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