Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
Encyclopedia
The Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) is a research facility organized under the University of Alaska Fairbanks
. Located on the University of Alaska Fairbanks
(UAF) campus, the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) offers high-performance computing
(HPC) and mass storage to the UAF and State of Alaska
research communities. Funding for ARSC operations is primarily supplied by UAF, with augmentation through external grants and contracts from various sources such as the National Science Foundation
and Lockheed Martin
(through the Department of Defense
High Performance Computing Modernization Program
.)
In general, the research supported with ARSC resources focuses on the Earth's arctic region. Common projects include arctic weather modeling, Alaskan summer smoke forecasting,
arctic sea ice analysis and tracking, arctic ocean systems, volcanic ash plume prediction, and tsunami forecasting and modeling.
Also, ARSC is hosting a Cray XE6 named Tana with 256 CPUs and 2.36 TFLOPS. This is a test and development system for the HPCMP Open Research System's Cray, Chugach.
University of Alaska Fairbanks
The University of Alaska Fairbanks, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska System, and is abbreviated as Alaska or UAF....
. Located on the University of Alaska Fairbanks
University of Alaska Fairbanks
The University of Alaska Fairbanks, located in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA, is the flagship campus of the University of Alaska System, and is abbreviated as Alaska or UAF....
(UAF) campus, the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) offers high-performance computing
High-performance computing
High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.-Overview:...
(HPC) and mass storage to the UAF and State of Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
research communities. Funding for ARSC operations is primarily supplied by UAF, with augmentation through external grants and contracts from various sources such as the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
and Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....
(through the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
High Performance Computing Modernization Program
High Performance Computing Modernization Program
rightThe High Performance Computing Modernization Program is a program within the United States Department of Defense started in 1993 to modernize the U.S. military's supercomputing infrastructure...
.)
In general, the research supported with ARSC resources focuses on the Earth's arctic region. Common projects include arctic weather modeling, Alaskan summer smoke forecasting,
arctic sea ice analysis and tracking, arctic ocean systems, volcanic ash plume prediction, and tsunami forecasting and modeling.
History
Since its founding in 1993, ARSC has hosted a variety of HPC systems. The following is a listing of various HPC systems acquired by ARSC over the course of time:- 1993 - Cray YMP named Denali with 4 CPUs and 1.3 GFLOPS, StorageTek 1.1 TB Silo.
- 1994 - Cray T3D named Yukon with 128 CPUs and 19.2 GFLOPS.
- 1997 - Updated Yukon to a Cray T3E 600 with 88 CPUs and 50 GFLOPS.
- 1998 - Cray J90 named Chilkoot with 12 CPUs and 2.4 GFLOPS, Updated Yukon to a Cray T3E 900 with 104 CPUs, Expanded StorageTek to 330+ TB.
- 2000 - Expanded Yukon to 272 CPUs and 230 GFLOPS, Updated Chilkoot to a Cray SV1 with 32 CPUs and 38.4 GFLOPS, Doubled StorageTek Hardware.
- 2001 - IBM SP named Icehawk with 200 CPUs and 276 GFLOPS.
- 2002 - Cray SX-6 named Rime with 8 CPUs and 64 GFLOPS, IBM P690 Regatta named Iceflywer with 32 Power4 CPUs and 166.4 GFLOPS.
- 2004 - IBM P690+/P655+ named Iceberg with 800 CPUS and 5 TFLOPS, Cray X1 named Klondike with 128 CPUS and 1.6 TFLOPS, Mechdyne MD Flying Flex 4 projector Virtual Environment, Two SUN Fire 6800 Storage Servers.
- 2005 - Cray XD1 named Nelchina with 36 CPUs.
- 2007 - Sun Opteron Cluster named Midnight with 2312 CPUs and 12.02 TFLOPS, StorageTek SL8500 Robotic Tape Library with 3+ PetaByte capacity.
- 2009 - Cray XT5 name Pingo with 3456 CPUs, BladeCenter H QS22 Cluster with 5.5 TFLOPS and 12 TB Filesystem.
- 2010 - Penguin Computing Cluster named Pacman with 2080 CPUs and 89 TB Filesystem, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server named Bigdipper with 7 Petabyte Storage Capacity, Cray XE6 named Chugach with 11648 CPUs and 330 TB Filesystem, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server named Wiseman with 7 Petabyte Storage Capacity, Cray XE6 named Tana with 256 CPUs and 2.36 TFLOPS
- 2011 - Expanded Pacman to 3256 CPUs and 200 TB Filesystem.
Academic resources
- Pacman — 3256-core Penguin Computing OpteronOpteronOpteron is AMD's x86 server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture . It was released on April 22, 2003 with the SledgeHammer core and was intended to compete in the server and workstation markets, particularly in the same...
cluster
- Bigdipper — A Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server connected to a Sun StorageTek SL8500 robotic tape library. Potential long term storage potential capacity is seven petabytes.
Research systems
- Quasar - IBM QS222 System
- Various additional research systems, including general-purpose GPU computing systems
HPCMP Enhanced User Environment
ARSC is under contract to operate the High Performance Computing Modernization Program Enhanced User Environment Test Lab for the Department of Defense. This consists of a small number of test systems with no operational data at the Lab.Also, ARSC is hosting a Cray XE6 named Tana with 256 CPUs and 2.36 TFLOPS. This is a test and development system for the HPCMP Open Research System's Cray, Chugach.