NERSCPowering Scientific Discovery for 50 Years

Exploring NERSC's Mission and Impact at APS

NERSC is featured in a video at this week’s American Physical Society annual meeting. » Read More

Getting a Peek Into Ice Giants

Scientists are using NERSC's Perlmutter supercomputer to study the interior chemistry of ice giant planets like our solar system's Neptune. » Read More

50 Years of NERSC Firsts

Get the highlights from our last half-century of scientific supercomputing. » Read More

Revealing the Reaction Behind Salt-Based Nuclear Reactors

Using computing resources at NERSC, researchers have revealed how electrons interact with ions of molten salts, providing insights into the processes that could occur inside salt-based nuclear reactors. » Read More

NERSC Turns 50 in 2024

Did you know NERSC got its start in fusion energy research? Learn more about our unique history and join us in celebrating half a century of energizing scientific enlightenment through computing. » Read More

Shining a Light on Microbial Dark Matter

NERSC collaborations help illuminate Earth’s biodiversity. » Read More

Perlmutter Supports Gravitational Lensing System Modeled on GPUs

A team of researchers has modeled a rare instance of strong gravitational lensing known as an Einstein Cross. It’s likely the first such model run on GPUs. » Read More

National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center

NERSC is the mission scientific computing facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the nation’s single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences.

Computing at NERSC

Now Playing

Some Scientific Computing Now in Progress at NERSC

Project System Nodes Node Hours Used
Two-phase flow interface capturing simulations
 ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge
 PI: Igor Bolotnov, North Carolina State University
perlmutter 512
Computational studies in plasma physics and fusion energy
 Fusion Energy Sciences
 PI: Abhay Ram, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
perlmutter 96
High-Latitude Application and Testing (HiLAT) of Earth System Models & Regional Arctic System Model
 Biological & Environmental Research
 PI: Hailong Wang, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
perlmutter 73
Wisconsin Turbulence Modeling for MCF
 Fusion Energy Sciences
 PI: Benjamin Faber, University of Wisconsin - Madison
perlmutter 64
Large scale simulations of materials for quantum information science
 ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge
 PI: Giulia Galli, University of Chicago
perlmutter 64
Understanding the nature of cold anisotropic filaments in multiphase interstellar media
 Fusion Energy Sciences
 PI: Ka Ho Yuen, Los Alamos National Laboratory
perlmutter 64

Did You Know?

Lucky Tokens

Man and woman show lucky cat figurine while standing in front of open computer system cabinet.

Yukiko Sekine, Jonathan Carter, and the Hopper system's “lucky cat,” in 2011. (Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)

NERSC’s Hopper supercomputer contained 153,216 compute cores, 217 terabytes of memory, 2 petabytes of disk storage—and a cat figurine for luck!

Hopper, named in honor of computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper, had a Japanese "lucky cat" figurine stashed in one cabinet. In April 2011, Yukiko Sekine (NERSC's former Energy Department program manager) presented the cat to Jonathan Carter (currently associate lab director for the Computing Sciences Area).

It’s not the first lucky token to stand guard over NERSC’s large, complex, and well-used scientific supercomputers. Other systems – for reasons known only to NERSC staff – have been protected from ill fate by rubber chickens. (»Visit our interactive timeline to learn more about NERSC history.)