ICESS Procurement

Sustained teraflops within NCAR's production systems since 1999, including the estimated capacity during 2007-2011 from the ICESS procurement. As new systems become more powerful, CISL must develop methods for managing them to provide efficient computing resource to users. CISL will ensure that the two increases from the ICESS procurement will provide maximum benefit to meet the scientific mission of the organization. View large image.

During FY 2006 CISL completed the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation (ICESS) procurement of NCAR's next-generation supercomputer. The scientific community and technical support experts provided guidance throughout the procurement process, assisting in the formulation of the system requirements to meet the scientific objectives of the institution, evaluating vendor proposals, and recommending the solution that provided a best value and maximum benefit to UCAR. The ICESS contract was awarded to IBM in September 2006. NCAR will continue a strong working relationship with IBM to provide a robust and reliable supercomputing environment that will enable advances in Earth System science across the entire NCAR user community.

The ICESS procurement will result in two significant increases in sustained computational capacity at NCAR. In early FY 2007, the IBM POWER4 computer bluesky will be replaced by an IBM POWER5 system (named blueice) that will increase computing capacity more than a factor of 2 beyond current (FY 2006) levels. During FY 2008, blueice will be replaced by an IBM POWER6 product that is expected to provide at least a 2.5-fold increase over FY 2007 levels. The chart shows the realized and estimated levels of sustained computational capacity at NCAR from 1999 until 2011.

The ICESS system supports the NCAR strategic priority of "Enhancing capability and capacity of NCAR supercomputing." NCAR's supercomputers are managed by CISL under the UCAR/NSF Cooperative Agreement and are supported by NSF Core funds including CSL funding.