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Originally appeared in Friday, July 25, 2003 Oak Ridger
URL: http://www.oakridger.com/stories/072503/new_20030725012.shtml
Computing simply super at ORNL
Sleek geeks: Researchers are moving into the new state-of-the-art computational center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. But the most exotic creatures at the facility have already set up shop.
By: R. Cathey Daniels | Oak Ridger Staff cathey.daniels@oakridger.com
The hallways are humming at the new Computational Sciences Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Sleek purple and green furniture is being pushed into place, occupancy- sensor lighting checked and state-of-the-art equipment unloaded and installed. All this amid tour groups galore checking out the three-story complex designed to catapult the United States to the top of the supercomputing world.
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About 200 researchers recently took up residence in the 40,000 square-foot facility, which is part of a $70 million three-building complex privately financed by UT-Battelle. About 50 more researchers will move in Monday, and another 50 the following week.
But the most exotic creatures - two consoles of the Cray X-1 supercomputer - have already set up shop and are running faster applications than the lab's world-class Cheetah (see related story).
For Buddy Bland, director of operations, it's a long-time dream coming true right before his eyes.
"It's a once-in-a-career opportunity, to design and build a computer center to our specifications," said Bland. "And you know, it's just loads of fun."
The center will double the size of the lab's closest sister-in-computing lab, Lawrence Berkeley, and allow for the convergence of computation, theory and experimentation on an unprecedented scale, said Bland.
"This has never been possible before, and it's really critical to scientists," he said.
Besides the supercomputing stable, the center houses three robotic tape libraries, each with about 6,000 cartridges capable of hosting between 20 and 100 gigabytes of data.
When scientists need information, the robotic arm swings into action, grabbing a fraction of the 150 trillion bytes of information currently stored at the lab, and within seconds churns that data out to the supercomputer.
On the second floor is the visualization theater, which will become a Department of Energy user facility by year's end. The theater will bring to bear about 35 million pixels of resolution across multiple screens for envisioning huge data sets generated from computers all across the DOE complex.
The computational center is joined by a two-story atrium to two other research facilities, forming the complex which will anchor the lab campus.
"We look forward to coming down and reviewing the modernization progress at the lab and getting a status check on the SNS project," said Davis.
Abraham will first visit Knoxville for a luncheon hosted by Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe.
Abraham was sworn in as the 10th Energy Secretary on Jan. 20, 2001.
Prior to his post at DOE, Abraham represented Michigan in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2001.
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