E3SM – A Decade of Progress: Fun Facts
Fun Fact
If you’re an E3SM user or developer, you may be familiar with the high-performance computing machine Compy, but did you know that’s only a nickname? The computer’s full name is in fact CompyMcNodeFace! The name was conceived in the E3SM all-hands name voting competition and was chosen by popular demand.
CompyMcNodeFace is hosted at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and was funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) in 2019. It consists of 460 nodes of Intel Xeon Skylake CPUs and supports the E3SM project, as well as related BER-funded projects working with the E3SM model.
The specific name was a riff on a similar competition for a British research vessel, during which the proposed name Boaty McBoatFace went viral and won the competition. The name was vetoed for the ship itself (now the RRS Sir David Attenborough), but was assigned to the lead Autosub Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV).
See Boaty McBoatface for the full story and links to several related variants that have successfully won a number of other popular naming competitions.
Got a Fun Fact?
We’re planning to highlight one or more fun facts per Newsletter this year. Do you have a fun fact about E3SM you’d like to share? Let us know!
This article is a part of the E3SM “Floating Points” Newsletter, to read the full Newsletter check:
