E3SM Dedicated Resources Update
Compy is up and running!
Compy, E3SM’s dedicated machine at PNNL, consists of 460 nodes of Intel Xeon Skylake CPUs.
Compy is a new computer hosted at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER). It is designed to support the E3SM project, as well as related BER-funded projects working with the E3SM model.
First announced in the E3SM Fall 2018 Floating Points Newsletter (see E3SM Computing Resources), Compy is now up and running and has passed initial acceptance tests.
Back side of Compy showing wiring
Researchers are now porting the E3SM model to the new machine and developing optimal load-balanced configurations for supported compsets. General availability will follow as soon as this work is complete. Access to Compy can be requested through the E3SM confluence page. RGMA and SciDAC funded researchers should contact their BER program manager.
Compy contains 460 nodes of dual socket Intel Xeon Skylake CPUs with 192 GB of DDR4 DRAM and 40 cores per node, with a high-speed OmniPath interconnect and 1 PB of disk storage. The system will provide 160 M core-hours per year, representing a significant increase in the computing power available to the BER-E3SM community. Due to the state-of-the-art CPUs, researchers expect this new machine will be one of the fastest available for running the moderate-resolution E3SM v1 model.
Fun Fact
The computer’s full name is “CompyMcNodeFace”, affectionately shortened to “Compy”. The name was conceived in the E3SM all-hands name voting competition and chosen by popular demand.
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface for the full story and links to several related variants that have successfully won a number of other popular naming competitions.
