Benji Oswald from the University of Idaho discusses Falcon, a supercomputer owned by the Idaho National Laboratory since 2014.
Falcon underwent a significant update in 2017, which included replacing all the processors, resulting in 932 nodes. While some nodes have experienced hardware failures over time, Falcon still boasts a substantial capacity of 33,000 total cores. Compared to other universities in the region, Falcon is a magnitude larger.
When Falcon was transferred to the University, a new back-end file system was built, providing 1.3 petabytes of storage. Users are allocated a nominal 30 terabytes of storage, but there is currently no strict enforcement of these quotas as nobody has reached the limit yet. However, if more storage is required, users can present their case to the Falcon Operations Committee, which consists of representatives from the three Idaho universities (University of Idaho, Boise State University, and Idaho State University).
