AWE boasts some of the most advanced and powerful supercomputing facilities in the world.
High performance computing provides three-dimensional modelling and simulation capabilities, used by AWE’s physics, materials and engineering fraternity.
Information from hydrodynamics and laser experiments, data from materials ageing studies and results from previous actual nuclear tests, are all utilised in refining the computer codes used in the mathematical modelling of nuclear weapon performance. AWE’s visualisation suites provide further support, creating large-scale virtual 3-D graphics to aid various design, simulation and mechanical engineering projects.
Scientific and technical computing has always played a major role in the design of nuclear weapons, but this role has been significantly heightened since the ban on underground testing. AWE’s ability to assure the safety and performance of the warheads therefore depends crucially on numerical simulations for modelling physics and engineering aspects of the weapon.
The high performance computing platforms, current and future, are designed to meet AWE’s needs both for capability computing (a few very large jobs) and capacity computing (many small jobs).
Our three current platforms are:
- Cray XT3 ‘Redwood’
- IBM RS/6000SP ‘Blue Oak’
- Intel Pentium Clusters ‘Galaxy & Quasar’