The Department of Commerce and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have announced a $100 million investment for NOAA’s newest HPC (high-performance computing) system, Rhea.

Rhea will be installed in a new modular facility as part of the NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center (NESCC) in Fairmont, West Virginia, and will advance research on weather, climate, ocean, and ecosystem prediction.

The funding came from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act and will be used to install the modular data center unit set to house Rhea, and related storage, networking, and switches, and will be connected to the current HPC center at NESCC, which includes the 3.27 petaflops Hera supercomputer.

Currently, NOAA has 35 petaflops of R&D HPC capacity available and once online, Rhea will add approximately eight additional petaflops to the center. NOAA is also planning to integrate another, unnamed, HPC system at the NESCC which will bring its R&D HPC capacity to around 48 petaflops.

When operational, Rhea will form part of NOAA’s Research and Development High-Performance Computing System, which includes four other research and development HPC centers located in Boulder, Colorado; Princeton, New Jersey; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and on the campus of Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi.

“This investment in high-performance computing will result in significant scientific and economic impacts,” said Zachary Goldstein, NOAA CIO and director of high-performance computing. “The computer’s installation at the NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center in West Virginia will strengthen NOAA’s partnership with the West Virginia High Technology Foundation, which is committed to building a stronger, more diverse economy for the region.”