Booting up: BP opens 110,000-SF seismic supercomputer

HOUSTON – British Petroleum has opened its new three-story, 110,000-sf Center for High-Performance Computing (CHPC) located on BP’s Westlake Campus.

The facility will serve as the company’s hub for processing and managing geophysical data across BP’s portfolio. “It is the largest supercomputer for research in America, and it’s going to take seismic to the next level,” said James Dupree, BP’s COO of research and technology.

The supercomputer will boast total memory of 536 terabytes and disk space of 23.5 petabytes — the equivalent of 147,000 Apple iPods with 160GB memory. If stacked vertically, those iPods would climb nearly five times higher than the Empire State Building.

BP will relocate more than 3,000 computing systems from its previous supercomputing facility. The new center opened with around 2,500 computers and has a peak power draw of 2.5 MW, expandable to 7.25 MW.