Chipeta, NCAR's newest CRAY J90se vector computer, came online on 24 March 1998. Named for the "Queen of the Utes" and devoted wife of Chief Ouray, the new machine is virtually identical to NCAR's J90se computer ouray. It has the same filesystem layout and system software, plus 24 processors (which deliver 1.5 gigaflops sustained) and 1 gigaword of memory.
Dedicated to university and NCAR scientists, chipeta increases the
General Accounting Unit (GAU) pool for community users by 50%.
"Chipeta is great for large-memory jobs, just like ouray," said Supercomputer Systems Group member Bill Anderson, who coordinated the software configuration during acceptance testing. "It's a ouray clone -- the software, the queue structure, the environment are the same. If someone has been using ouray successfully, all they have to do is change the machine they submit their job to."
The new machine was popular with users from the beginning. During the first week it was available to the community, it was filled to 99% capacity (perhaps because usage was free: charging didn't start until a week later).
"That gave it a good workout," Anderson said. "After that week, we knew it would work."
For more information on chipeta, see:
www.scd.ucar.edu/computers/chipeta
