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Old 06-05-2016, 10:46 PM   #1
ke0me
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Ft. Collins, CO (mail forwarding)
Posts: 303
Default NCAR Supercomputer Center and bison

We took our oldest grandson on a camping trip as part of his high school graduation present.

He is totally into computer programming so I was stuck for a while on where to take him.

By accident, I found out that NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) has a super computer center in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

They offered a tour into the super computer area on Fridays.

We arrived and the Assistant Operations Manager took us on a tour. We were the only people on the tour. Our grandson is SCARY smart, and I assure you he was asking questions about computers where I couldn't even understand the question!

The tour guide (Jim) was super and answered all his questions. He did a super job explaining the more technical aspects so us lesser mortals could understand.

This is a huge facility, even larger than some of the biggest telecom switches I used to work on.

To get an idea of what they do, imagine dividing the surface of the earth into small cubes from sea level to say 50,000 feet. Then load each cube with a large amount of data, pressure, temperature, wind, moisture, etc.

Now take the equations that some really smart folks have developed, and crunch the numbers to predict and analyze the weather for the entire earth.


Just a few facts my brain retained:

faster computer equals more heat. The computer cabinets are both LIQUID and AIR cooled. The pipes in the lower level that carry the cooling fluid are 2 feet in diameter.

They are talking about operation speeds in Petaflops/second! I would have to ask Carl how big a Peta is. I only go up to "Tera".


The "tape library" that stores their archive data has around 10,000 tapes. Each tape holds 4 Terabytes of data, and is retrieved using a robotic system that selects the tape from storage and mounts it in a drive bay. In 20 seconds.

The facility is very energy efficient , recycling a lot of the heat from cooling the supercomputers for other uses.

OH, and the bison.

We stayed at Terry Bison Ranch and RV Park, south of Cheyenne. They run a bison herd of about 4000 head. They have a funky "train" that takes you on tour where you can feed the bison. Great fun for the kids.

The campground is full hookup, but average in other respects. No pool, no cable.

So we were able to experience the old west and the latest technology in one trip.

www.terrybisonranch.com

http://www.nwsc.ucar.edu/
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