US Government Puts Decommissioned Cheyenne Supercomputer Up for Auction
Bidding Starts at $2,500 for the Once 20th Most Powerful Supercomputer
The US General Services Administration kicked off an auction on Tuesday for the retired Cheyenne supercomputer, situated in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Installed in 2016, the 5.34-petaflop system was once ranked as the 20th most powerful supercomputer worldwide. The starting bid was set at $2,500, but the current price has soared to $270,085.
Cheyenne’s Impressive Tenure and Contributions to Research
Cheyenne was operational from January 12, 2017, to December 31, 2023, at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center. During its service, the powerful and energy-efficient system significantly contributed to atmospheric and Earth system sciences research.
In its lifetime, Cheyenne delivered over 7 billion core-hours, served over 4,400 users, and supported nearly 1,300 NSF awards,
states the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) on its official Cheyenne information page. The supercomputer also played a crucial role in education, supporting over 80 university courses and training events, and nearly 1,000 projects were awarded to early-career graduate students and postdocs. Impressively, Cheyenne-powered research generated more than 4,500 peer-reviewed publications, dissertations, theses, and other works.
Extended Service and Maintenance Limitations
According to UCAR, Cheyenne was initially planned to be replaced after five years. However, the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains, leading to an additional two years of service. The auction page mentions that Cheyenne recently faced maintenance limitations due to faulty quick disconnects in its cooling system, resulting in the failure of approximately 1% of the compute nodes, primarily caused by ECC errors in the DIMMs. Given the high costs and downtime associated with repairs, the decision was made to auction off the components.
Cheyenne’s Specifications and Energy Efficiency
With a peak performance of 5,340 teraflops (4,788 Linpack teraflops), the SGI ICE XA system could perform more than 3 billion calculations per second for every watt of energy consumed, making it three times more energy-efficient than its predecessor, Yellowstone. Cheyenne featured 4,032 dual-socket nodes, each with two 18-core, 2.3-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2697v4 processors, totaling 145,152 CPU cores. It also included 313 TB of memory and 40 petabytes of storage, consuming about 1.7 megawatts of power in operation.
Comparison to the World’s Top-Rated Supercomputer
To put Cheyenne’s capabilities into perspective, the current world’s top-rated supercomputer, Frontier at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee, boasts a theoretical peak performance of 1,679.82 petaflops, includes 8,699,904 CPU cores, and consumes 22.7 megawatts of power.
Auction Details and Requirements for Potential Buyers
The GSA emphasizes that potential buyers should be prepared to hire professional movers with suitable equipment to handle the heavy racks and components. The auction includes seven E-Cell pairs (14 total), each with a cooling distribution unit (CDU), weighing approximately 1,500 pounds each. Additionally, two air-cooled Cheyenne Management Racks, each weighing 2,500 pounds, containing servers, switches, and power units, are included in the auction.
As of the time of writing, 23 potential buyers have placed bids on this computing behemoth. The auction is set to close on May 3 at 6:11 pm Central Time. However, it’s important to note that fiber optic and CAT5/6 cabling are not included in the resale package, despite the extensive cabling shown in the photos.
3 Comments
Alexander K. Reed: Honestly, who wouldn’t want a decommissioned supercomputer as the ultimate conversation starter?
Seriously, imagine the electricity bill from powering up one of those beasts at home!
Chloe Adams: Honestly, just think of the insane gaming setup you could create, if it didn’t overload your house first!