Falcon

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Falcon Supercomputer

Falcon is an SGI ICE X supercomputer currently operated and used by a consortium of Idaho research universities (University of Idaho, Boise State University, Idaho State University). Falcon is owned by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and ranked 97th on the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers when it was operationalized in 2014 and significantly upgraded in 2017. Through a Memorandum of Understanding (January 2022), management and use of Falcon was transferred to the Idaho research computing consortium.

Falcon currently consists of approximately 932 nodes with dual Intel Xeon E5-2695v4 18-core processors running at 2.1 GHz (36 cores per node) for a total of 33,552 cores capable of more than 1 PetaFLOPS of compute capacity. Each node on Falcon is configured with 128 GB of RAM for a total of about 120TB of overall system memory, uses an Infiniband-based interconnect configured as a 7-dimensional hypercube, and uses a 1.3 petabyte fault-tolerant Lustre filesystem.

Faculty, staff, and students from the three Idaho universities access Falcon free of charge. Falcon is connected to the universities via the Idaho Regional Optical Network (IRON) which enables high speed data transfers to both local and remote compute centers.

Benjamin Oswald

Director Computational Resources Core
University of Idaho
boswald@uidaho.edu

Joseph Leister

Systems Administrator
Research Computing and Data Services
University of Idaho
jleister@uidaho.edu

Michael Ennis

High Performance Computing Solutions Architect
Idaho State University
michaelennis@isu.edu

Idaho C3+3 Collaboration. (2022). Falcon: High Performance Supercomputer. University of Idaho. https://doi.org/10.7923/falcon.id

Falcon News & Projects

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Intro to Falcon Workshop

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Learn how to use the newly available Falcon Supercomputer to accelerate your research! At this hands-on workshop, research computing experts will walk you through how to log in, transfer data, submit jobs, and answer any questions you have about using Falcon for your specific research. This event is open to faculty, staff, students, and postdocs…
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Using Falcon GPU Resources Workshop

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Learn how to use the GPU resources available on the Falcon Supercomputer to accelerate your research! At this hands-on workshop, research computing experts will walk you through how to request the GPU nodes and provide hands-on examples of GPU-accelerated jobs. This event is open to faculty, staff, students, and postdocs who have Falcon accounts and are…
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Falcon Supercomputer Workshop January 2024

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Learn how to use the newly available Falcon Supercomputer to accelerate your research! At this hands-on workshop, research computing experts will walk you through how to log in, transfer data, submit jobs, and answer any questions you have about using Falcon for your specific research. This event is open to faculty, staff, students, and postdocs who are interested…
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Using Falcon to Simulate Geothermal Energy

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The Earth’s subsurface holds a vast trove of renewable energy in the form of heat stored within rocks. If harnessed correctly, this geothermal energy could potentially power humanity for centuries. To extract this energy, engineers use a geothermal closed-loop system that requires advanced simulations and high-performance computing. In the summer of 2022, Boise State Ph.D….
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Using Falcon for Nuclear Salts

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Written by: Kelsey Swenson, IIDS Scientific Writing Intern Molten salt reactors are advanced nuclear technologies capable of generating efficient electrical energy. Scientists such as John Russell, Associate Director for University of Idaho’s Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), use the Falcon supercomputer to work on the fundamental physics behind these new molten salt technologies to…
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