CU Uses Supercomputer to Predict the Weather

When the University of Colorado and Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) needed a cutting-edge data center to house their new Janus supercomputer, they turned to us to deliver an innovative solution. Tasked with designing and building a facility capable of supporting one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, we embraced the challenge of creating a modular, turnkey solution that would meet their immediate needs while offering room for future growth. This project showcases how collaboration, precision engineering, and efficient construction can enable groundbreaking scientific research.

Challenge: New supercomputer needed a home

The University of Colorado and Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) were looking for a partner to design and build a new data center on campus that would house their new Janus supercomputer.

The supercomputer consisted of 1368 nodes, each containing two six-core Intel Xeon Westmere-EP chips at 2.8 GHz, for a total of 2736 processors and 16416 cores. The theoretical peak performance is 184 GFLOP/s. Each core had 2 GB of RAM for a total of 24 GB per node and 32 TB of memory in the entire system.

At the time, the new supercomputer was forty-fifth on the top five-hundred list of fastest supercomputers in the world.

The supercomputer was to be used by scientists and researchers to study atmospheric chemistry, climate, cloud physics and storms, weather hazards to aviation, and interactions between the Sun and Earth.

Solution: A turnkey, modular facility, fabricated to order

Working closely with the University, and our partners at Dell and Data Centers Delivered, we collaborated on a concept that would fit both their near term and future needs. The result was a plan to engineer and build a turnkey, modular, 65’ x 35’ facility, fabricated to order.

The facility was built off-site and took about 13 weeks to complete. This was done to minimize disruption at the Boulder project site.

Upon completion of the module fabrication, a fleet of trucks transported the modules to the site, where they were set on concrete foundation, secured and weather proofed. All in a span of 9 hours.

The project demonstrates the impact of innovative design and efficient build, to deliver a world class concept in very short about of time.