German Climate Computing Center

The Earth cannot be reproduced in a laboratory! How, then, can we understand such a system so complex and dynamic? And how can we address that most pressing of questions: What does the climate hold in store for our future and for Earth's? There is only one tool – the supercomputer – capable of addressing the complexity of world climate and the endless change in both its individual components and their manifold interaction.

DKRZ, the German Climate Computing Center, provides these tools and the associated services which are needed to investigate the processes in the climate system: Computer power, data management, and guidance to use these tools efficiently. As a national service provider, DKRZ operates a supercomputer center to enable climate simulation and provides the scientific users with the technical infrastructure needed for the processing, analysis, and preservation of climate data. This also includes support for related application software, and advice and support in data processing issues. Finally, DKRZ also participates in national and international joint projects with the aim of improving the infrastructure for climate modeling.

DKRZ thus constitutes an outstanding research infrastructure for model-based simulations of global climate change and its regional effects.

Among other services, DKRZ hosts the Supercomputer Mistral that has been deployed in two phases. A few statistics can be found in the following table:

DKRZ offers a single Lustre file system and uses DNE-Phase 1 to distribute metadata across 5 metadata servers.