Description

The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) was officially opened October 15, 2012. Designed to provide advanced computing services to scientists, the facility houses an IBM iDataPlex supercomputing system with 72,288 processor cores and a peak computational rate of 1.5 Petaflops. NWSC is designed to house water-cooled High Performance Computers (HPC - named Yellowstone), consuming 1.5MW energy monthly on average. Yellowstone HPC energy consumption accounts for over 80% of total energy consumption. Consistent with The Green Grid level 3 data center rating, 15 minutes recordings of annual data trends of the energy systems using highly calibrated sensors. Energy consumption trends were analyzed using statistical methods as a diagnostic tool in optimizing operation. While NWSC has shown steady improvements to 1.3PUEL3,YC and 1.0EREL3,YC measurements over the first year of operation, two areas were identified for improvement. Energy Recovery System operation inefficiency was identified and redesigned to optimize mechanical load consumption for cooling and heating respectively for all seasons, salvaging about 50% HVAC consumption. While a recently implemented UPS firmware upgrade further enhanced energy efficiency. Future work will build on using statistical models to identify when the NWSC is not operating efficiently, providing an important diagnostic capability.