A huge thank you to REAST Member Andrew Elwell for giving us a talk on the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.
This centre is based in Western Australia and Andrew is a Supercomputing Systems Administrator who works remotely from his home in Cygnet, Tasmania.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre prides itself on incorporating a range of best practices, features and solutions. Key features of the Centre include:
- A purpose-built supercomputing building of more than 1000 m2 at Technology Park in Kensington, Western Australia; complete with scalable cooling and electrical services, to accommodate for expanding supercomputing infrastructure within the facility
- A unique groundwater cooling system for removing heat from the supercomputer and dissipating this heat via an aquifer, 140 metres below the Centre, with no loss of groundwater.
- A photovoltaic system which has been incorporated into the building’s shaded façade, plus an extensive PV array on the roof of the building
- This installation generates 140 kW of electricity onsite, which acts to offset the electrical and CO2 footprint of the Supercomputing Centre
- Automated ‘intelligence’ incorporated into the building, with real-time monitoring, to facilitate efficient operation and support fine tuning of operations to reduce overall power costs
Andrew will be covering the centre, its history, who was Joe Pawsey and the work being undertaken to process the data from the Square Kilometre Array radio astronomy project.
This should be a fascinating presentation.
One not to be missed.
73, REAST Committee.