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The supercomputer behind the 2024 headline was Cheyenne, a former National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) system. The auction is historical, not an opportunity that is still open: NCAR says Cheyenne began retirement in December 2023. The reported lot specifications were 145,152 CPU cores and 313 TB of memory, but the available reporting does not establish the winning bidder or final sale price.
What was the supercomputer in the auction?
It was Cheyenne, NSF NCAR’s flagship research supercomputer at the NSF NCAR Wyoming Supercomputing Center. NCAR says the system began operating in January 2017 and was ranked the 20th-fastest supercomputer when inaugurated. Its work supported scientific research into weather, wildfires, climate patterns and other Earth-system questions.
NCAR described Cheyenne as having a theoretical performance of 5.34 petaflops—an indication of peak computing capability, not a guarantee of application speed. Thomas Hauser, director of the NSF NCAR Computational and Information Systems Lab, said: “Cheyenne was an extraordinary success,” and “Its leading-edge computing and data handling capabilities of its time enabled scientists to gain new insights into the Earth system. These insights continue to yield significant benefits for society.” NCAR & UCAR News, January 12, 2024
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How many cores and how much memory did the reported lot include?
HotHardware reported that the auction listing described 8,064 Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 processors, totaling 145,152 CPU cores, and 313 TB of DDR4-2400 ECC RAM. These are figures reported from the 2024 auction lot; NCAR’s retirement announcement independently confirms Cheyenne’s identity and theoretical performance but does not give that processor-and-memory inventory.
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Those totals describe a large research system, not a ready-made desktop or a straightforward personal-computer upgrade. Core and RAM counts alone do not establish that a machine is suitable for a particular modern workload, including AI.
Can you still bid on Cheyenne?
No active opportunity is established by the available reporting. HotHardware’s May 1, 2024 article described a GSA Auctions listing and reported a bid of $50,085 while the reserve had not been met, with just over two days remaining. That was a snapshot during the auction, not a confirmed closing price. The article’s suggestion that the price might reach $75,000 or more was an estimate, not a verified result. The winning bidder, final price and transfer terms remain unverified.
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HotHardware also reported that faulty quick disconnects had caused water to spray and that repair had been judged not worthwhile in the circumstances described. Treat that condition as reported auction context, not as a verified current inspection or a repair assessment for a prospective buyer. The article raised practical concerns such as space, electrical power, repair capacity and floor loading, but did not provide engineering specifications or verified installation requirements. HotHardware’s May 1, 2024 report
What happened to Cheyenne after the auction listing?
Cheyenne began retirement in December 2023, after seven years of operations, according to NCAR. Its successor, Derecho, has a stated theoretical performance of 19.87 petaflops. NCAR says Derecho delivers more than three times Cheyenne’s performance and is more energy-efficient. Those are system-level comparisons; they do not mean that raw performance figures predict results for every scientific application.
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