About the Scientific Computing Division

The Scientific Computing Division (SCD) is part of the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

SCD's mission is to serve the computing, research, and data management needs of the geosciences. SCD realizes this mission by providing:

High-performance computing and expertise needed for the development and execution of large, long-running numerical simulations
A data archiving and management system that is balanced in performance and capacity relative to computational resources
High-speed network and data communication capabilities that are balanced with respect to computational facilities, storage facilities, and the requirements of a national and international community
Research datasets and expertise needed by atmospheric and related sciences
A computing environment and support services that emphasize user productivity and cost-effectiveness
Education and training in computing and related technologies with an emphasis on under-represented
groups
Transfer of appropriate NCAR technology to the private sector in collaboration with the UCAR Foundation

Supercomputers, data storage, and networking

Today, SCD manages and operates:

Technical and commodity supercomputers with an aggregate capacity of over 20 teraflops peak and an average of 700 gigaflops sustained on simulations in production,
A Mass Storage System that archives and serves over 70 terabytes of atmospheric and related research data, over 3 petabytes of data used in supercomputing simulations, and a current total capacity of over 6 petabytes,
High-speed, reliable, secure fiber optic and wireless network connectivity to five campuses with support for over 142 logical networks, 180+ monitored network devices/servers, 1,972 network attached VoIP telephones, and more than 6,746 network attached devices within NCAR/UCAR organization, plus participation and connectivity to national high-speed research and commodity.

In addition to managing equipment for high-performance computing, mass storage of scientific data, and networking, SCD maintains a sophisticated physical infrastructure to house that equipment, along with a professional operations staff who provide support 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

Quick response to problems is ensured by continual monitoring of all systems and a formal protocol for monitoring, diagnosing, and reporting problems. Low-level situations are handled by SCD operators, while higher-priority situations are immediately called or paged in to designated hardware, software, or network engineers from SCD or the appropriate vendor. A trouble-ticket system logs and tracks all reports, providing an efficient process for problem escalation and solution.

Serving user communities

In fiscal year 2005, SCD offered services and support to over 1,000 users at more than 200 sites. The division supplies computing resources to two communities of researchers, the Community Facility and the Climate Simulation Laboratory. The Community Facility provides high-performance computing to support the NCAR scientific program and meet the needs of university researchers in atmospheric and related sciences. The Climate Simulation Laboratory, a multiagency facility established in 1995, provides high-performance computing, data storage, and data analysis systems to support coupled climate models and large ensembles of climate prediction models.

More than 40 years of operational expertise

NCAR has provided computing resources and services to the atmospheric science research community since its inception in 1960. The NCAR Computing Facility was formally organized in 1964 and became the Scientific Computing Division (SCD) in 1980. SCD thus has more than 40 years of operational expertise in administering complex and highly reliable computing environments.