Kestrel Supercomputer: Taking Flight at NREL (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video Kestrel Supercomputer: Taking Flight at NREL.

[Music plays, visuals of NREL supercomputer being built]

>>Kris Munch, NREL Laboratory Program Manager for Advanced Computing: Today we are installing Kestrel which is our third-generation supercomputer here at NREL. And Kestrel is very exciting for us because it represents more than a five-times increase in our computing power. So, that will put us at about a 44-petaflop system, our current computer Eagle is at about 8 petaflops…so it's a pretty big increase

>>Aaron Andersen, Advanced Computing Operations Group Manager, Kestrel Engineering Lead: Kestrel represents new capabilities that we can do better science faster. There's an awful lot of research questions and problems that just need more capability in order to make considerable progress.

>> Munch: The computing work that we do is everything from material science all the way up to grid modernization and trying to figure out how we're going to do our grid of the future, basically.

>>Surendra Sunkari, High-Performance Computing Engineer, Kestrel Technical Lead: It's about two years' worth of planning, and finally it's here! The days are going to run fast. It's going to be a lot of work, but it's going to be a fast-moving process because we want to get the system up into production.

>>Roy Fraley, Data Center Engineer, Kestrel Lead of Facility Integration: I'm excited, relieved that it's finally here. I'm ready for it to be done, but so far so good.

>>Andersen: Today is very much about the physical placement of the cabinets and putting things in place. We'll start to cable the system in the next couple days.

>>Fraley: We need to tie in the hydronics, the facility plumping needs to get its final mile connection to the CDUs, and we also need to plug in power, and apply power.

>>Sunkari: After the physical install is done, make sure everything is operating as expected, and the system is fully functional…

>>Andersen: …then we'll shift to an awful lot of software configuration making sure the system is ready for application work.

>>Munch: This is definitely a team effort, if you walk into the data center, you see people from our advanced computing operation staff, our facilities staff, you see our site operations, electrical engineers, people from ESIF operations are in there. So, it's a huge effort, everybody's coming together, as a team, to get this installed.

[Text on screen: Kestrel will be operational by summer 2023.]

[Text on screen: Follow the Countdown to Kestrel: nrel.gov/hpc/kestrel-computing-system.html]