Cray XT5m - Lynx

Lynx was a Cray XT5m supercomputer. The feline name was chosen because the system was similar to but much smaller than a Cray XT system known as "Jaguar" at the National Center for Computational Sciences. (Jaguar once topped the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers.)

NCAR acquired Lynx as a test and evaluation platform rather than a full production supercomputer like its Bluefire counterpart. CISL determined that the investment in a test Cray XT5m was of strategic importance and, while the system was used by CISL system administrators and computational scientists, many NCAR users also used Lynx for production computing to offload work from Bluefire.

Lynx was installed in the NCAR Mesa Laboratory's computer facility and used for three and a half years. Despite being a test and evaluation platform, over its lifetime Lynx's average utilization was 49.3%. It was decommissioned October 1, 2013, after the opening of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center and CISL's deployment of Yellowstone, the inaugural supercomputer at the NWSC, in production.