NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: March 14, 2013                                                Contact: Kerry Larsen

Release Number: 13-1                                                    Email: Kerry.larson [at] usace.army.mil

The Navy Department of Defense (DoD) Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC), one of the five supercomputing centers in the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), recently added three new supercomputers to its operations. The three IBM iDataPlex systems, installed in the fall of 2012 and operational in January, tripled the installed capacity of the Navy DSRC.  

The new supercomputer, located at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, are named after NASA astronauts who have served in the Navy. At a dedication ceremony in February, one of those computers was dedicated in honor of naval aviator and Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise, who attended the ceremony.   The other two IBM systems are named for retired Navy Cmdr. Susan Still Kilrain, a naval aviator and space shuttle pilot, and retired Navy Capt. Eugene Cernan, a naval aviator and the last man to stepfoot on the moon.

Installation of the new systems expanded the installed supercomputing capability of the Navy DSRC, which now peaks at 866 trillion floating point operations (teraFLOPs) per second. Future upgrades are expected to further increase that capacity to 5,200 teraFLOPS by 2016.

“The Navy DSRC provides unique value within our supercomputing system,” observed John West, HPCMP director. “In addition to serving the users from the research, development, test and evaluation communities of the department served by all of our centers, the Navy DSRC has a unique mission to assist the Navy in delivering wind, wave and other oceanographic forecasts to the fleet on a 24/7 basis. We are proud of the work of our partners, and the men and women of the Navy DSRC, that have brought this added capability online for the department.”

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About the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP)

The HPCMP provides the Department of Defense supercomputing capabilities, high-speed network communications and computational science expertise that enable DoD scientists and engineers to conduct a wide-range of focused research, development and test activities. This partnership puts advanced technology in the hands of U.S. forces more quickly, less expensively, and with greater certainty of success. Today, the HPCMP provides a complete advanced computing environment for the DoD that includes unique expertise in software development and system design, powerful high performance computing systems, and a premier wide-area research network. The HPCMP is managed on behalf of the Department of Defense by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center.

For more information, please visit our website at: www.hpc.mil