Cyberinfrastructure Procurement and Deployment

The photo shows bluevista, a supercomputer based on the IBM POWER5 processor and the High Performance Switch communication technology. When it was installed, it effectively doubled the high-end computing resources available at NCAR while halving the turnaround time of most applications. CISL bears the ongoing responsibility to provide the numerical simulation community with resources that offer the best combination of computational capability and capacity that can be used effectively.

For nearly 50 years NCAR has provided a computational environment to satisfy the institution's overall mission of providing robust, reliable, accessible, innovative and advanced services to the university community and the broader scientific community. These services to the community support the NCAR strategic priorities of "Enhancing capability and capacity of NCAR supercomputing" and "Developing and providing advanced services and tools."

CISL assumes this responsibility within the context of the NCAR Strategic Plan and continues the historical provision of classic computational services:

• High performance computing production environment
• Mass storage
• Network connectivity
• Data analysis and visualization
• Data distribution

In addition, CISL continually evaluates opportunities to provide services designed to enable Earth system science for the entire community of users:

• Integration with the TeraGrid
• Experimental computing systems
• Earth System Knowledge Environment

The availability in early FY 2006 of the IBM POWER5 supercomputer bluevista was the first step in a five-year plan to meet the SCD Strategic Plan (3.3 MB pdf file) goal of a 25-fold increase in sustained computing capacity (over 2004 levels) by 2009. During FY 2006, CISL initiated the second step in the plan by executing the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation (ICESS) procurement. The scientific community was engaged to assist in formulating and evaluating the system requirements that will meet the scientific objectives of the institution. In September 2006 the ICESS contract was awarded to IBM. The ICESS contract calls for two significant increases in computational capacity at NCAR by the beginning of FY 2009, and keeps CISL in alignment with its strategic plan that was released in FY 2005.

NCAR's supercomputers are managed by CISL under the UCAR/NSF Cooperative Agreement and are supported by NSF Core funds including CSL funding.