Computing Facilities

In order to support the various climate models and tools available at CATE, we have invested in a few state-of-the-art computing facilities.

One of this is a dedicated High Performance Computing (HPC) facility.  In 2010, CATE purchased the Cray-CX1 supercomputer, the deskside high performance cluster, the first of its kind in the UK.  It has a total of 8 compute blades connected via InfiniBand.  Each node is equipped with 2 Intel© Xeon© Quad-Core 2.93 GHz processors, 24 GB DDR3 RAM and 500GB hard drive.

CATE’s Cray CX-1 is setup to run the 3D global CTM MOZART.  The Cray CX-1 is capable of running a full year simulation of MOZART v3.5, which includes detailed stratospheric and comprehensive tropospheric chemistry, on T42LR (2.8 x 2.8 deg) horizontal resolution and 60 vertical levels in approximately 12 hours.

 

 

In addition to the Cray CX-1, CATE also has two Linux servers and one server running Microsoft© Windows Server 2008 R2 (Enterprise).  The two Linux servers are setup to complement the Cray CX-1, one acting as the head node for the HPC cluster and the other as the storage node.  The storage node is configured with RAID 5 plus one hot spare, and is also equipped with a tape drive, providing backup facility to the research group.

The Windows Server is another CATE’s dedicated facility, used to run Microsoft © SQL Server 2008 R2 (Enterprise).  This SQL server is used primarily to run the newly upgraded aviation emissions model, FAST. The server will enable FAST to use more detailed flight data such as actual flight trajectories in emissions calculation.