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HPC systems | Storage systems | Analysis and visualization | Data collections | Help page


Yellowstone
Yellowstone system at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

CISL is a world leader in providing supercomputing and related resources for the geosciences community, serving NCAR, more than 70 UCAR member universities in the United States, and affiliates worldwide.

Please see each resource's home page for detailed information about using that system.

HPC systems

  • Yellowstone: A 1.5-petaflops high-performance computing system with 72,288 processor cores and 144.6 terabytes of memory. It is housed at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC). Yellowstone's predecessor, Bluefire, was decommissioned January 31, 2013.
  • Janus: A Dell Linux cluster housed on the CU-Boulder campus, with a high-speed networking connection to NCAR's computing and data storage systems.
  • Lynx: A Cray XT5m system deployed as a testing platform and available to NCAR users.
System System type CPU speed
and type
Compute
nodes
Cores
per node
Memory per node Peak performance File system Node interconnect
Yellowstone IBM iDataPlex 2.6 GHz Intel Sandy Bridge EP 4518 16 32 GB 1.5 PFLOPS GPFS InfiniBand
Fat-tree (FDR)
Janus Dell PowerEdge C6100 2.8 GHz Intel Westmere 1368 12 24 GB 184 TFLOPS Lustre InfiniBand
Fat-tree (QDR)
Lynx Cray XT5m 2.2GHz hex-core AMD 76 12 16 GB 8.0 TFLOPS Lustre Cray Proprietary
2-D Torus

 

Storage systems

  • GLADE: The central GLADE file system allows users to access their data from both HPC and analysis systems.
  • HPSS: CISL's High-Performance Storage System (HPSS) consists of new tape libraries with storage capacity of more than 100 petabytes at NWSC and another 15 petabytes of storage at the Mesa Lab in Boulder. HPSS replaced CISL's venerable Mass Storage System after more than 20 years of service. All MSS files are available in HPSS.

Analysis and visualization

  • Geyser and Caldera: These systems provide large-scale data analysis capabilities and GPU-enabled visualization for scientific research. Caldera also supports development and testing of GPGPU-accelerated codes. Geyser and Caldera are successors to the Mirage and Storm clusters, which were retired in 2013.
  • VisLab: NCAR's VisLab is an Access Grid site, capable of multi-site, multimedia meetings as well as a state-of-the-art scientific visualization environment capable of stereo projection.

Data collections

  • Research Data Archive (RDA): CISL develops and curates research data sets and maintains user-centered online access to the RDA.
  • Community Data Portal (CDP): The CDP is a collection of earth science data sets from NCAR, UCAR, UOP, and participating organizations.
  • Earth System Grid (ESG): The ESG integrates supercomputers with large-scale data and analysis servers located at numerous national centers to create a powerful environment for next-generation climate research.

Documentation

See the links above and the menus on the left side of your screen for documentation relating to individual systems and procedures and for information regarding support and training. To make suggestions for improving our end-user documentation, please use this form to send your comments. We appreciate your feedback.