Mission

The mission of the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) is to support and advance the Earth system sciences by providing world-class computing environments, data services, and research in computational science. We achieve this mission by supplying the research community with:

Derecho system cabinets at NWSC

Derecho, installed in 2023, features 2,488 compute nodes with 128 AMD Milan cores per node and 82 nodes with four NVIDIA A100 GPUs each. The HPE Cray EX cluster is a 19.87-petaflops system that is expected to deliver about 3.5 times the scientific throughput of the Cheyenne system.

  • High-performance computing resources and expertise needed for the development and execution of large, long-running numerical simulations, with an emphasis on user productivity and cost-effectiveness
  • A data storage and management system that is balanced in performance and capacity relative to computational resources
  • High-speed network and data communication capabilities connecting our computational and storage facilities and meeting the needs of a national and international community
  • Research data sets and expertise needed by the Earth system science community
  • Education and training in computing and related technologies with an emphasis on under-represented groups

About the CISL organization

Each year, we deliver computing resources, services, and support to more than 1,500 users at over 500 universities and research institutions, and CISL data services are used by tens of thousands of researchers worldwide.

Our organization has provided computing resources and services to the Earth system science research community since NCAR’s inception in 1960. Today’s CISL organization traces its origins to the NCAR Computing Facility, which was formed in 1964 and became known as the Scientific Computing Division (SCD) in 1980. SCD became the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory in 2005.

Our evolution is reflected in the technology that has supported scientific research through the years. See NCAR’s supercomputing history for a unique record of computational history and technological progress.