Supercomputers Arrive at NCAR - KGWN –Cheyenne, WY– Scottsbluff, NE News,Weather, Sports

Supercomputers Arrive at NCAR

Construction began two years ago, now the NCAR Wyoming Supercomputing Center is almost complete.

At a cost of approximately $30 million, the IBM supercomputing system know as "Yellowstone" began being unloaded off pallets and set into place.

"There's 106 cabinets total for the entire system. That includes the compute notes, the storage notes. There's a lot of different facets of the entire system," said Gary New, Operation Manager for NWSC.

At a weight of between 1,200 and 2,100 pounds each, unloading and setting each cabinet into place was quite a challenge.

"As you can see we have to take a lot of precautions because we're on a raised floor system here that we do not overweight the floor," New said.

NCAR's Wyoming Supercomputing Center will specialize in collecting data for atmospheric research to be used by scientists from all over the world.

"These supercomputers are going to help us better understand things like severe storms. Scientists are going to better understand tornadoes in ways that will enable society to get better advanced warning of tornadoes," said David Hosansky of NCAR.

The supercomputer will also provide data from under the ground to help discover energy deposits.

Providing new research on wind energy will be another advantage.

"Researchers are hoping to use this system to better understand very fine scale movements of wind and how much energy that could generate that could generate at wind farms," Hosansky said.

Not only will scientists worldwide be taking advantage of the Cheyenne supercomputer, so will dozens of professors at the University of Wyoming in a variety of fields.

"It's really a great opportunity for the university to do research at levels that we've never been able to do before," said Chad Baldwin, Director of Institutional Communications at UW.

The center has been designed to accommodate growth and advancing technology.

"It will last for a number of decades. Even though now supercomputers will be moved in every few years, as computers get more powerful this facility will be able to accommodate technological advances," Hosansky said.

The supercomputing center will have it's grand opening October 15 when it will start collecting data.