U.S. Government Auctions Off Cheyenne Supercomputer for $480,085

The U.S. government recently concluded an online auction where the Cheyenne supercomputer was sold for $480,085. This system includes 8,064 Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 processors with 18 cores and 36 threads each at 2.3 GHz, along with 313 TB of RAM divided across 4,890 64GB ECC-compliant modules. Employed for over seven years, the supercomputer was instrumental in climate and weather research across Wyoming and nationally.

Unfortunately for buyers, none of the 32 petabytes of high-speed storage was included in the sale. However, a knowledgeable eBay seller could potentially flip the processors and RAM for about $700,000, yielding a significant profit.

The auction was necessitated by a high failure rate and maintenance challenges, including faulty quick disconnects that caused water spray. These issues led to considerable downtime and maintenance costs, prompting the search for a replacement. Cheyenne will be replaced by the new Derecho supercomputer, costing between $35-40 million from HP.

The buyer is responsible for transporting the 30 server racks from the facility themselves; the government will not provide transport or include the necessary Ethernet or optical cabling to operationalize the machine. With the auction price representing just 2% of Cheyenne's estimated original construction cost of $25 million, this sale underscores the depreciation and operational challenges faced by high-end computing assets.

Both versions are tailored to fit the character limit while detailing the supercomputer's sale, technical specifications, and implications for buyers and the maintenance team.