'Mother Earth' research computer loaded with new processors

PHOTO BY JAY NAVE

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Cray XE6 Gaea supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is used for climate modeling and research simulations. The graphic on Gaea's cabinets was designed by Jamison Daniel of ORNL. (Jay Nave/ORNL)

OAK RIDGE — Cray Inc. recently delivered the final 26 cabinets of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate research supercomputer, which is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Cray XE6 supercomputer, nicknamed "Gaea, Mother Earth," is loaded with new AMD 16-core Interlagos processors, according to Jeff Nichols, an associate lab director at ORNL who heads the computational sciences program.

PHOTO BY JAY NAVE

Cray Inc. workers Scott Morgan, left, and Al Enger install components of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Gaea supercomputer recently at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After a series of upgrades, the climate modeling computer will have a peak performance of 1,100 trillion calculations per second. (Jay Nave/ORNL)

After the original segment is upgraded in the spring and the two pieces are integrated into one system, Gaea will become a 1.1 petaflops (1,100 trillion calculations per second) supercomputer, ORNL's computing chief said.Nichols said Gaea is currently in two pieces. The original 14-cabinet system has a peak capability of 260 teraflops (260 trillion calculations per second), while the second piece is the new 26-cabinet system with a capability of 720 teraflops, he said.

Gaea is NOAA's top research computer, and it will become the third petascale machine housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The others are Jaguar, currently the world's third-fastest computer and soon to be transformed into a new "Titan" system that will more than triple its power, and Kraken, a National Science Foundation/University of Tennessee machine.

According to information provided by ORNL, Gaea is liquid-cooled and uses Cray's ECOphlex technology, which employs a refrigerant to remove most of the computer's massive heat load. The technology is significantly more energy-efficient than the air-cooling systems typically found in other high-performance computing systems, the lab said.