# Bluefire Supercomputer

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The **Bluefire Supercomputer** is an [IBM](/source/IBM) [supercomputer](/source/Supercomputer) installed in May 2008 by the [National Center for Atmospheric Research](/source/National_Center_for_Atmospheric_Research) (NCAR). It is used to advance research into severe weather and the future of Earth's climate.

## Usage

Scientists at NCAR, and across the country, use the system to accelerate research into [climate change](/source/Climate_change), including future patterns of [precipitation](/source/Precipitation_(meteorology)) and [drought](/source/Drought) around the world, changes to agriculture and growing seasons, and the complex influence of [global warming](/source/Global_warming) on [hurricanes](/source/Hurricane). Researchers also use it to improve [weather forecasting](/source/Weather_forecasting) models so society can better anticipate where and when dangerous [storms](/source/Storm) may strike.

## Performance

Bluefire has a peak speed of more than 76 teraflops (76 trillion floating-point operations per second). When first installed, it was ranked at number 38 on the list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. [1]

## ICESS

Bluefire is the second phase of a system called the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation (ICESS) at NCAR. The first phase was called Blueice.[2] After undergoing acceptance testing, Bluefire began full operations in August 2008 and replaced three supercomputers with an aggregate peak speed of 20 [teraflop](/source/Teraflop).

## Hardware

Bluefire uses the [POWER6](/source/POWER6) [microprocessor](/source/Microprocessor), each having a [clock speed](/source/Clock_speed) of 4.7 [gigahertz](/source/Gigahertz). The system consists of 4,064 such processors, 12 terabytes of memory, and 150 terabytes of DS4800 disk storage.

## Cooling system

Bluefire relies on a [water-based cooling system](/source/Water_cooling#Computer_usage) that is 33 percent more energy efficient than traditional air-cooled systems. Heat is removed from the electronics by water-chilled copper plates mounted in direct contact with each POWER6 microprocessor chip. As a result of this water-cooled system and POWER6 efficiencies, Bluefire is three times more energy efficient per rack than its predecessor.

## References

1. ["Bluefire - Power 575, p6 4.7 GHZ, Infiniband | TOP500"](https://www.top500.org/system/176390)

1. ["Blueice: The IBM p575"](https://web.archive.org/web/20120307124341/http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/ibm/blueice.jsp). Archived from [the original](http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/gallery/ibm/blueice.jsp) on 2012-03-07. Retrieved 2011-12-30.

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