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NERSC Center News

NERSC Wins HPCWire Editors' Choice Award

November 19, 2014

NERSC was awarded HPCWire’s 2014 Editors’ Choice Award for Best HPC Collaboration Between Government & Industry for its partnership with Intel and Cray in preparation for Cori, the Cray XC supercomputer slated to be deployed at NERSC in 2016. Read More »

SC14 DOE Booth Presentations by NERSC, Berkeley Lab Staff

November 17, 2014

At the DOE booth (#1939) during the SC14 conference this week, NERSC and Berkeley Lab staff will give featured talks, present demonstrations and host roundtable discussions. Read More »

NERSC Scientists Contribute to SC14 Technical Program

November 17, 2014

Here's a look at the various talks, presentations, tutorials and demos that NERSC and other Berkeley Lab staff will be participating in during SC14. Read More »

A Comprehensive Look at High Performance Parallel I/O

November 10, 2014

In this era of “big data,” high performance parallel I/O is extremely important. Yet, the last book to summarize best practices in this area was written more than 10 years ago. To fill the void, Berkeley Lab's Prabhat and HDF Group's Quincey Koziol brought together leading practitioners, researchers, software architects, developers and scientists to contribute their insights for a new book called “High Performance Parallel I/O.” Read More »

Cybersecurity Expert Jim Mellander Retiring from NERSC

October 22, 2014

Jim Mellander, senior cyber security engineer at NERSC, is retiring November 1. He’s been with the center since 2009 and affiliated with Berkeley Lab for nearly 15 years. Read More »

Big Data = Big Storage Challenges

October 11, 2014

As the amount of scientific data processed and archived at DOE supercomputing facilities reaches epic proportions, NERSC remains at the forefront of data management and storage innovations. Read More »

NERSC Hosts Application Readiness and Portability Meeting with OLCF and ALCF

September 25, 2014

Over 30 staff members from NERSC, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and Argonne Leadership Computing Facility met at Berkeley Lab’s Oakland Scientific Facility September 24-25 to coordinate strategies for application readiness in preparation for the next generation of supercomputers. Read More »

Harnessing Star Power: NERSC Aids Decades of Fusion Energy Science

September 25, 2014

In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission—predecessor to the U.S. Department of Energy—initiated a fusion energy research program to investigate the feasibility of using a controlled fusion reaction to generate energy. That program was the beginning of what we now know today as the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, which has supported decades of research designed to produce a safe and sustainable energy resource based on fusion. Read More »

John Shalf Gives Talk at San Francisco High Performance Computing Meetup

September 17, 2014

In his role as NERSC’s chief technology officer, John Shalf gave a talk on “Converging Interconnect Requirements for HPC and Warehouse Scale Computing at San Francisco High Performance Computing Meetup. Read More »

Prabhat Steps In as DAS Group Lead

September 1, 2014

Prabhat has been named Group Lead of the Data and Analytics Services (DAS) Group at NERSC. Read More »

Kjiersten Fagnan Appointed NERSC/JGI Engagement Lead

September 1, 2014

Kjiersten Fagnan has been named the NERSC/JGI Engagement Lead for Joint Genome Institute computational and data analysis efforts carried out at NERSC. Read More »

NERSC Selects 20 NESAP Code Teams

August 25, 2014

NERSC has accepted 20 projects into the NERSC Exascale Scientific Applications Program, a new collaborative effort that partners NERSC, Intel and Cray resources with code teams across the U.S. to prepare for Cori, the center’s next-generation supercomputer. Read More »

NERSC Launches Next-Generation Code Optimization Effort

August 11, 2014

The new NERSC Exascale Science Applications Program (NESAP) is a robust application readiness effort launched to support NERSC’s next-generation supercomputer, Cori Read More »

Unraveling the Mysteries of Earth's Environment

August 11, 2014

Environmental scientists and biologists have become some of the most prolific users of NERSC resources—and with good reason. Read More »

Supercomputing Fuels Decades of Energy Discoveries

July 3, 2014

NERSC and the DOE's Office of Basic Energy Sciences have worked together for 40 years to help the research community gain new insights into renewable energy sources, materials science and related energy technologies and applications. Read More »

Ten Projects Awarded NERSC Allocations under DOE’s ALCC Program

June 24, 2014

Under the Department of Energy’s ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge program, 10 research teams at national laboratories and universities have been awarded 382.5 million hours of computing time at the NERSC. Read More »

NERSC Marks 40th Anniversary with Series of Lectures on Nobel Prize-Winning Science

June 19, 2014

To mark its 40th anniversary, NERSC presented a series of four invited talks featuring NERSC users whose research had led to Nobel prizes. Read More »

Berkeley Lab to Collaborate with Intel in Updating Scientific Applications for Manycore Architectures

June 18, 2014

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been named an Intel Parallel Computing Center (IPCC), a collaboration with Intel aimed at adapting existing scientific applications to run on future supercomputers built with manycore processors. Such supercomputers will have millions of processor cores, but today’s applications aren’t designed to take advantage of this architecture. Read More »

Nobel Keynote Lecture Series at Berkeley Lab

June 4, 2014

As part of its 40th Anniversary celebration NERSC is sponsoring a series of lectures describing the research behind four Nobel Prizes from Laureates who are also long-time NERSC users. Read More »

Peter Nugent Named Deputy for Scientific Engagement

June 3, 2014

eter Nugent has been appointed Deputy for Scientific Engagement in Berkeley Lab’s CRD. In his new role, Nugent will work with CRD and Computing Sciences leadership to develop and implement a strategy for engaging with other Berkeley Lab scientific divisions in need of computational solutions for data-intensive science projects. Read More »

From Solar Energy to Climate Change: How Science Uses Supercomputers

June 2, 2014

In honor of Supercomputing Month, we look at how research conducted at NERSC is helping the DOE advance energy and environmental research and improve the world around us. Read More »

Two Peas in a Pod: How NERSC & ESnet Grew Up Together

May 15, 2014

Two of the Department of Energy’s most scientifically productive user facilities share a 'super' history. Read More »

Computational Cosmology Comes of Age

May 7, 2014

A bevy of research conducted at NERSC over the past 20 years – including two Nobel Prize winning efforts – has changed the way we think about the origins of the Universe. Read More »

NERSC, Cray, Intel to Collaborate on Next-Generation Supercomputer

April 29, 2014

Scheduled for delivery in mid-2016, the new Cray XC system will deliver 10x the sustained computing capability of NERSC’s Hopper system, further enhancing scientific discovery at the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Read More »

Remembering NERSC's Roots

April 14, 2014

Kirby Fong joined NERSC in 1976, when it was still known as the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Computer Center. Here he shares some memories from those early years. Read More »

What’s in a Name?

April 1, 2014

NERSC’s name and logos have changed over the decades, reflecting the center’s increasingly broad scientific mission. Read More »

Petascale Post-Doc Project a Supercomputing Success Story

March 24, 2014

The first post-doctoral research project centered at NERSC is being credited with helping its participants advance their careers and boosting the state-of-the-art in high performance scientific computing software applications. Read More »

NERSC Gateways Pave Way for ‘Team Science’

March 12, 2014

Computational scientists at NERSC work with researchers around the globe to develop online tools that are changing the way they compute and collaborate Read More »

NERSC Gateways Pave Way for ‘Team Science’

March 12, 2014

For nearly a decade, computational scientists at NERSC have been working with researchers around the globe to develop online tools that are changing the way they compute and collaborate. Read More »

20th Century Reanalysis Project Featured in HPCWire Podcast

March 11, 2014

Long-time NERSC user Dr. Gil Compo and the 20th Century Reanalysis project were featured March 10 in an HPCWire podcast. Read More »

NERSC, LBL Researchers Share Materials Science Advances at APS

March 3, 2014

NERSC and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) were well represented at the American Physical Society (APS) March meeting, March 3-7 in Denver, CO. Read More »

Horst Simon: Navigating the Road to Exascale

March 3, 2014

The deputy director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory talks about the challenges -- and rewards -- of efforts to achieve the first exascale computing systems by 2020. Read More »

NERSC's First Director: John Killeen

February 11, 2014

John Killeen led the Center from 1974 until 1990, when he retired. The Department of Energy conferred its highest honor, the Distinguished Associate Award, on Killeen in 1980 in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the magnetic fusion energy program. Killeen died August 15, 2012 at age 87. Read More »

NCSA's Bill Kramer Assesses NERSC's HPC Legacy

February 8, 2014

At the Feb. 4-5 NERSC User Group meeting marking the center’s 40th anniversary, invited speaker Bill Kramer used the occasion to assess NERSC’s legacy to the high performance computing (HPC) community. Kramer, who is the director and principle investigator of the Blue Waters Project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois, was one of the first NERSC employees hired by LBNL when the center moved to Berkeley Lab. He spent 12 years as NERSC’s general manager. Read More »

Memorial Gathering Pending for NERSC’s Michael Welcome

February 4, 2014

A celebration of life is pending for Michael Welcome, a member of NERSC’s Mass Storage Group, who collapsed at work on Thursday, Jan. 30, and subsequently died. Welcome spent his entire career working for computing organizations at Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. He was 56. Read More »

NERSC Announces Second Annual HPC Achievement Awards

February 4, 2014

NERSC announced the winners of its second annual High Performance Computing (HPC) Achievement Awards on Feb. 5, 2014, during the annual NERSC User Group meeting at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Read More »

Early Edison Users Deliver Results

January 31, 2014

Before any supercomputer is accepted at NERSC, scientists are invited to put the system through its paces during an “early science” phase. While the main aim of this period is to test the new system, many scientists are able to use the time to significantly advance their work. Read More »

Edison Electrifies Scientific Computing

January 31, 2014

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center recently accepted “Edison,” a new flagship supercomputer designed for scientific productivity. Named in honor of American inventor Thomas Alva Edison, the Cray XC30 will be dedicated in a ceremony held at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) on Feb. 5, and scientists are already reporting results. Read More »

Al Trivelpiece and the Origins of NERSC

January 30, 2014

The former Oak Ridge National Laboratory director describes his role in the creation of the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Computer Center, one of NERSC's precursors. Read More »

NERSC@40: How It All Began

January 30, 2014

In 1974, an almost-obsolete supercomputer once used for defense research was made available to support the fusion energy research community, the first time such a powerful computing resource was used for unclassified scientific computing. Read More »

NERSC Celebrates 40 Years at the Forefront

January 29, 2014

This year, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is celebrating yet another milestone: its 40th anniversary. Read More »

40 Years of NERSC Firsts

January 29, 2014

From its humble beginnings in 1974 to today, NERSC has grown and expanded in terms of both supercomputing capabilities and user services. Here are some of the highlights. Read More »

David Skinner Named NERSC Strategic Partnerships Lead

January 24, 2014

NERSC created a new position—Strategic Partnerships Lead, to identify new science communities that can benefit from NERSC resources. David Skinner, 15-year NERSC veteran and former head of the facility’s Outreach Software and Programming Group, will fill the role. Read More »

NERSC@40 User Group Meeting Feb 3-6

January 15, 2014

This year's NERSC User Group meeting is the first event of NERSC's 40th anniversary celebrations. It features a two-day "Celebration of Science and Technology", new user training, and a business meeting. Read More »

NERSC Kicks Off 40th Anniversary with 2014 Supercomputing Calendar

January 15, 2014

NERSC is kicking off a year-long celebration of its 40th anniversary with a free, downloadable 2014 calendar that takes a unique look back at the center's supercomputing history. Read More »

NERSC Enhances PDSF, Genepool Computing Capabilities

January 3, 2014

The Linux computing resources that support the Parallel Distributed Systems Facility and Genepool systems at NERSC have been expanded to give users faster access to their data. Read More »