High-Performance Computing & Research

NCAR's Computational & Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) is a world leader in supercomputing and cyberinfrastructure, providing services to over 60 UCAR member universities as well as NCAR and the larger geosciences community. Additionally, NCAR performs basic and applied research in IT, computational science and mathematics.

Highlighted Topics

• Supercomputing/Mass Storage

  Modeling complex Earth and atmospheric systems requires constant attention and innovation in response to researchers' high-end computing needs. Whether it is procuring and maintaining the systems themselves, or managing the exponential growth in data to be archived for future use, NCAR strives for world-class leadership in high-end computing support.

• NCAR's participation in the TeraGrid project

  NCAR is dedicated to integration and collaboration across scientific projects, scientific organizations, and technology. A key component of this goal is our partnership with the NSF-supported TeraGrid facility, as a resource provider and catalyst for enhanced services to the Earth System science community.

• Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences (IMAGe)

  IMAGe brings mathematical models and tools to bear on fundamental problems in the geosciences, and will be a center of activity for the mathematical and geophysical communities. The Institute is currenly organized around four groups in applied mathematics who collaborate with nearly every research group at NCAR and have numerous ties to researchers outside of our center.

• Computational Science

  NCAR conducts research in computational science, applied mathematics, numerical analysis, geosciences, and software engineering and undertakes efforts to track and benchmark computing efforts. Developement of open source software packages and numerical libraries to make use of this research in atmosphere, ocean, and geoscience models supports NCAR and the research community's efforts.

• Consulting, User Support

  With a focus on assisting users of its high performance computing facilities, NCAR works to enhance scientific workflow by providing the research community with porting assistance, documentation, and effective strategies for use of high performance computing resources. We also provide the research community with a highly advanced computing environment tailored toward the specialized needs of interactive data post-processing, analysis and visualization.

• Visualization and Enabling Technologies & Data Analysis

  NCAR's Visualization Lab is a state-of-the-art, scientific visualization environment capable of stereo projection.