NCAR Supercomputing ‘Data Center’ Project

1. NCAR Supercomputing ‘Data Center’ Project An NCAR-led computing ‘facility’ for the study of the Earth system May 30, 2006

2. Project Review • NCAR Mesa Lab computer facility: power, cooling and floor space will be inadequate beyond the current procurement • Science being restricted by focusing on capacity ahead of capability • Facility concept: 30,000 (initial to 60,000) sq. ft., 150,000 (to 300,000) sq. ft., 4 (to 24) MW redundant power, cooling, ~ 20 year lifetime • Phase 1 facility est. construction cost @ $50M to $70M • Such a facility would be a computational equivalent of the Hubble Telescope for geoscience simulation

6. Schedule 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Discovery Planning/Financing • Project plan development - Sep-Dec • Community engagement - Ongoing • Partnership development - Nov-Mar, down-select in April and June • Engage National Science Foundation (GEO, OCI) - Ongoing • Forge international collaborations (UK/NERC, ENES) • Initiate facility building project ~ Summer 2006 • Community workshop - September at NCAR • Submit project prospectus to NSF – Jan 2007 • First electrons ~ Summer 2010 Design Construction

7. An OpportunityNSF’s Petascale Roadmap “Overarching Recommendation: Establish a Petascale Collaboratory for the Geosciences with the mission to provide leadership-class computational resources that will make it possible to address, and minimize the time to solution of, the most challenging problems facing the geosciences.” www.joss.ucar.edu/joss_psg/meetings/petascale/

8. NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure Vision2006-2010 A petascale center linked with multiple 100+ teraflop centers… Track-2 $30m Track-2 $30m 100TF Track-1 $200m 1 Petaflop Sustained Track-2 $30m Track-2 $30m

9. Geosciences HPC Research Consortium Concept Other National Labs and Supercomputer Centers and International Alliances NSF Geosciences Research Community ATM, OCE, EAR, + Minority Institution Resource Center Earth Interiors Resource Center Geosciences HPC Collaboratory Center Energy Research Resource Center Atmospheric Science Resource Center NCAR + Facility Partner Hydrology, Energy, etc. Research Communities Ocean Science Resource Center Computational Science Resource Center

10. Scientific Steering Committee • Rick Anthes Meteorology, UCAR • Rafael Bras Hydrology, MIT • Guy Brasseur Atmospheric Science, Max Planck Institute, Hamburg • Kelvin Droegemeier Atmospheric Science, OU • Tamas Gombosi Space Science, U Michigan • Gregory Jenkins Atmospheric Science, Howard • Thomas Jordan Geophysics, USC • David Maidment Hydrology, Univ. Texas • Jean-Bernard Minster Seismology, SIO • John Orcutt Oceanography, SIO • Tim Palmer Weather and Climate, ECMWF • Annick Pouquet Geophysical Turbulence, NCAR • Jagadish Shukla Climate, COLA • Paola Rizzoli Oceanography, MIT • David Yuen Geophysics, UMN NCAR committee • Tim Killeen, Larry Winter, Katy Schmoll, Al Kellie, Lawrence Buja, Peter Fox, Aaron Anderson, Peter Backlund, Frank Bryan, Krista Laursen, Rich Loft, Jeff Reaves, Henry Tufo, Olga Wilhelmi, Michael Wiltberger

11. Concluding remarks …

12. Contacts at NCAR • Tim Killeen (killeen@ucar.edu) - NCAR Director • Lawrence Buja (southern@ucar.edu) and Peter Fox (pfox@ucar.edu) are co-chairs of the NCAR project team • Aaron Anderson (aaron@ucar.edu) is the computing facilities contact • Jeff Reaves (jreaves@ucar.edu) is the financial/ contracts contact