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Molecular Science Computing FacilityHigh Performance Computing Center
The MSCF High Performance Computing Center contains a Hewlett-Packard Linux-based computer for production. The MSCF provides a combination of production computing hardware and software resources to support the scientific research activities of the Computational Grand Challenge (GC) and EMSL Science Theme and pilot projects. The High Performance Computing System-2 (MPP2) is a balanced supercomputer that has been tailored to meet the operational needs of the users of the EMSL. The HP supercomputer became operational in August 2003 with a theoretical peak performance of 11.8 Teraflops and currently has 9.7 terabytes of RAM and 450 terabytes of local disk and 53 terabytes of a global shared file system. The system is connected to the lab via multiple Gigabit Ethernet connections allowing EMSL users to perform remote visualizations and transfer data to remote storage. The EMSL's NWfs archive is located inside the MSCF. The archive uses a unique approach to disk storage by clustering many low cost commodity disks to provide fault tolerant high performance storage. The current EMSL archive has 750 terabytes of storage and has the ability to grow to over a petabyte. The unique software developed by the MSCF to manage the large pools of clusters disks is called NWfs and is made freely available to users of the EMSL.
For more information about computers and the NWfs, see MSCF Computer Hardware.