SGI Origin3800/128 - Tempest
On September 30, 2004, NCAR's Dataproc SGI data analysis and processing platform was decommissioned and replaced by Tempest, a greatly enlarged SGI Origin3800 platform. The primary purpose of Tempest was interactive data processing and analysis.
Tempest had 128 500-MHz MIPS R14000 processors, 64 gigabytes of distributed shared memory, and 4.2 terabytes of disk space. It was connected to NCAR's Mass Storage System by fiber channel and to NCAR networks by gigabit Ethernet.
Tempest ran SGI's IRIX operating system and supported Fortran 90, FORTRAN 77, C, and C++ compilers.
Tempest served NCAR for just over three and a half years. It was decommissioned on April 23, 2008, so the Mesa Laboratory's computer room could be prepared for the arrival of a new IBM POWER6 system, Bluefire.