Dunham provided mechanical and electrical engineering services for multiple Supercomputers in an existing Walter Library data center. These Supercomputers provide students and other private organizations access to high-performance computing and helps facilitate cutting-edge research in various disciplines. The infrastructure serving the two most recent – and most powerful – of the University’s Supercomputers were designed by the Dunham Mission Critical team.

Itasca Supercomputer

The Itasca Supercomputer is made of a HP lunix cluster of 9,712 computer cores and 25TB of memory. The mechanical and electrical systems designed by Dunham serve approximately 300 kW of water cooled computer equipment and another 50 kW of digital storage equipment cooled by both water and air cooling. This system is designed for Tier I reliability.

Mesabi Supercomputer

Following the completion of the Itasca Supercomputer, Dunham was hired again by the University to design the next phase of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute’s (MSI) Supercomputer program. This system is an HP heterogeneous system and is seven times more powerful than Itasca. The system includes 62TB of memory, and is rated at 352 kw of Power – enough to power 270 homes.