David Baker Wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry

David Baker, a computational biologist and professor of biochemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, and prolific user of the systems at NERSC, has been awarded a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work in computational protein design. » Read More

Quantum Computing Partnership Extended

After a successful first year punctuated by strong scientific results, NERSC’s partnership with QuEra Computing has been extended. » Read More

Magnifying Deep Space Through the 'Carousel Lens'

Using the Perlmutter supercomputer, DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, researchers identified a rare and revealing gravitational lens. » Read More

Got What it Takes to be a Grace Hopper Postdoctoral Fellow?

Applications are now open. » Read More

Tropical Cyclones Intensify Due to Warming Atmosphere

Tropical cyclones have grown more intense near global coastal regions. A new study found that hotter air interacting with humidity and wind shear is likely the culprit. » 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

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Now Playing

Some Scientific Computing Now in Progress at NERSC

Project	System	Nodes
The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon High Energy Physics PI: Aida El-Khadra, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	perlmutter	384
Proton GPDs from lattice QCD using asymmetric frames Nuclear Physics PI: Martha Constantinou, Temple University	perlmutter	256
Relativistic quantum dynamics in the non-equilibrium regime Basic Energy Sciences PI: Albert De Prince, Florida State University	perlmutter	150
Continuing studies of plasma based accelerators High Energy Physics PI: Frank Tsung, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)	perlmutter	128
Lattice QCD Monte Carlo Calculation of Hadronic Structure and Spectroscopy Nuclear Physics PI: Keh-Fei Liu, University of Kentucky	perlmutter	128
Energy Exascale Earth System Modeling (E3SM) Biological & Environmental Research PI: Lai-Yung Ruby Leung, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)	perlmutter	96

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.)