At Arkitech Group, we’re always seeking opportunities to learn from the cutting-edge pioneers driving innovation in science and technology. Recently, we had the privilege of visiting the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
For over 50 years, NERSC has been at the forefront of high-performance computing and data analysis, accelerating scientific discovery under the DOE Office of Science. This visit provided a fascinating glimpse into their groundbreaking achievements and gave us an opportunity to explore how their state-of-the-art technology supports researchers tackling some of the most pressing scientific challenges of our time.
➡️ Perlmutter System: We got a close-up view of NERSC’s flagship hybrid GPU/CPU system. Perlmutter is 💧 100% water-cooled (no fans!), was ranked #5 on the Top500 list in November 2021, and supports over 10,000 researchers working on over one thousand basic scientific research projects across a wide range of disciplines, including:
🤖 Watching a tape library storage robot moving high-density tape drives to and from their storage slots.
🏗️ Viewing the complex, base-isolated computer access floor system that moves independently from the building during earthquakes, reducing the anticipated accelerations/forces on equipment.
❄️ Touring the chiller-less mechanical plant that provides NERSC an annualized Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) of 1.06.
💧 Hearing about NERSC's plans to incorporate air-cooled heat exchangers into their primary cooling water loop to significantly reduce water consumption from evaporative cooling.
A huge thank you to NERSC for the opportunity to tour this remarkable facility!
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