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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The U.S. government’s retired Cheyenne supercomputer sold at online auction for a winning bid of $480,085 in early May 2024. The 28-rack system included 8,064 Intel Xeon processors and more than 313 TB of memory; its 32-petabyte high-speed storage array was not part of the lot.
What sold, and for how much?
The winning bid was $480,085, according to Tom’s Hardware and The Register. The Register reported 27 bidders. The buyer’s identity was not publicly named in the available reporting.
The sale was for retired computing infrastructure, not a complete research facility or a ready-to-use desktop computer. The system was water-cooled and had to be dismantled and removed. NCAR later described decommissioning Cheyenne and its associated systems as a complex task.
What was included in the auction?
Reporting described the lot as a 28-rack SGI system with the following computing hardware:
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- 8,064 Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 processors
- 145,152 CPU cores
- More than 313 TB of DDR4-2400 ECC memory
- A stated theoretical peak capability of 5.34 petaflops
The 32-petabyte high-speed storage array was excluded from the auction lot, according to Tom’s Hardware. The $480,085 figure therefore should not be read as the price of a turnkey system with all of Cheyenne’s original storage and site infrastructure.
What was Cheyenne used for?
Installed at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the system entered operations in January 2017. NCAR and UCAR presented it as a national research resource for work including climate change, severe weather, geomagnetic storms, seismic activity, air quality, wildfires, and other Earth-system science.
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NCAR’s 2024 retrospective gives Cheyenne a theoretical capability of 5.34 petaflops and says it provided roughly three times the scientific-computing capacity of its predecessor, Yellowstone. One example of research enabled by the system examined atmospheric effects of the massive Australian bushfires of 2019–20 and their relationship to a rare multi-year La Niña event. See the NCAR/UCAR retrospective.
Why was Cheyenne retired?
Cheyenne completed its high-performance-computing mission as the newer Derecho system took over that role. NSF NCAR’s FY2024 report says staff then decommissioned Cheyenne and auctioned it in May 2024. The system’s auction was the disposition of a retired research asset, rather than an indication that the hardware had stopped being technically capable of computation.
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Why would someone buy an old supercomputer?
A buyer may value the components, engineering, or parts of a large system, but the purchase price alone does not establish that the hardware can be economically operated or redeployed. Cheyenne’s scale and water cooling mean that removal, transport, power delivery, cooling, facilities, recommissioning, and ongoing maintenance are material considerations. The reported lot also lacked the 32 PB storage array, which further distinguishes it from the complete environment researchers had used.
For a prospective operator, the useful question is not simply whether 145,152 cores sound powerful. It is whether the intended workload, facility, energy and cooling capacity, support needs, and total cost of ownership make sense together. The reported winning bid does not disclose the buyer’s plan or the final cost of putting the equipment to any new use.
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