Computer Resources

We have a cluster for model simulations composed of a 24-nodes/192 core cluster providing 1.68 million cpu-hrs annually (dual quad core Intel Xeon X5550 2.66 GHz processors) with 24-GBytes of memory per node and infiniband connections and a 14 node/112 core cluster (dual quad core Intel Xeon E5410 2.33 GHz processors) with 24 Gigabytes of memory per node.  Also available for model post-processing, a 32 node shared memory system with 128-GBytes of memory. These systems are attached to a 1 Petabyte storage system with integrated backup via 10Ggps Ethernet connection.

These clusters are used for code development, testing and limited production runs.  For more computationally demanding simulations, we use computational resources available from the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). TACC is co-located with the Pickle campus of the Jackson School of Geosciences and we have a 10Gbyte connection between our computers.  The TACC system includes Stampede, the largest computing system in the world for open science research (6400 nodes of 16 cores/node Dell PowerEdge C8220 cluster with Intel Xeon Phi co-processors, totaling 102,400 cores, 205 terabyte of memory, up to 10 petaflops of performance, and 14 petabytes of disk storage). For the past three years, we have been provided with 2 millions cpu-hrs annually on TACC system which has total 900 million cpu-hr on Stampede and another 200 millions cpu-hrs on Lonestar which is Xeon 5680 series 3.33 GHz hex-core processor within Dell PowerEdgeM610 nodes, totaling 22,656 cores, 44 terabyte memory.

The Jackson school and its Department of Geological Scientists includes many other faculty, especially in hydrology and geophysics, whose research emphasizes high performance computing so that we are collectively developing a program in computational geosciences. TACC also has many computational scientists available for consultation.