New Supercomputer Debuts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have launched a new supercomputer that would tackle climate science research.

The supercomputer, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Cray system that can deliver up to 10 petaflops of peak performance, is formally known as Gaea. It is also referred to as C5; it is the fifth supercomputer in total to be installed at ORNL, but one of only three currently in operation there.

The National Climate-Computing Research Center installed and runs the machine, ORNL said.

ORNL has historically operated two supercomputers for NOAA users at any given time. The machines are periodically replaced to ensure uninterrupted access while minimizing operational and maintenance costs. Paul Peltz, the ORNL technical lead for the Gaea program, said a single C5 cabinet could replace all the computational power of the existing C3 supercomputer, showing that the new system is more powerful than existing offerings.

C5 development was slated for the fall of 2021 but was delayed because of supply chain issues. The supercomputer’s hardware arrived in the summer of 2022, and after it was assembled, officials started the testing and acceptance process to ensure that the system can perform as expected.

The announcement comes weeks after the Department of Energy started installing the Kestrel high-performance computing system at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.