Computational Resources

Theory Facility scientists and users rely heavily on two main computational resources: The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); and a devoted in-house parallel Linux cluster, nano.lbl.gov, or Nano, which is maintained by the Scientific Cluster Support (SCS) service at LBNL. The Foundry annual allocation of computer time at NERSC is obtained through a yearly competitive proposal process; NERSC computer time is well-suited and extensively used by Foundry scientists for long-term projects and "production" runs that require large-scale computation.

Theory Facility Cluster

The Theory Facility's in-house parallel Linux cluster Nano is a 432 Intel Xeon processor machine networked with high-speed, low-latency Infiniband interconnects; it has 824 GB of total memory, uses a 5 TB parallel file system, and has a theoretical peak performance of 3.1 Teraflops. Nano is devoted exclusively to Foundry projects, allowing unrestricted and rapid access to staff scientists. Ideal for exploratory research, it provides the Theory Facility with the flexibility to address exciting new problems as they arise, allows fast turnaround for development projects, and is highly scalable for future expansion. We also have five Hewlett-Packard graphics workstations for local data manipulation, visualization, and analysis.