Nearly five years after the inception of the Blue Waters petascale computing project, the first part of the supercomputer is up and running this week as computer scientists begin to refine the initial system.

The University’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications, or NCSA, has been preparing for the project since the National Science Foundation, or NSF, granted funding in 2007. In 2008, the center entered into a contract with IBM, but IBM broke the contract in August, leaving the NCSA with no vendor. After redesigning the project, however, the NCSA chose Seattle-based computing company Cray Inc. as its new vendor in November.

By late January, Cray began delivering 15 percent of the supercomputing equipment to the National Petascale Computing Facility at 1725 S. Oak Street in Champaign. Trish Barker, NCSA spokeswoman, said this initial “Early Science System” has been hooked up.

“Now we’re kind of at the stage of debugging and making sure (the system) is running properly,” Barker said.

The NCSA is preparing itself for the researchers to start using Blue Waters later this month, as scientists from across the nation finish their computing codes to be used on Cray’s system. The NSF has awarded more than $300 million in grants for scientists to simulate their research on Blue Waters. Barker said three or four research teams will begin utilizing the system in late March.

“It will probably be the really experienced teams that are used to working on systems that are not totally debugged,” she said.

The NCSA has not set an exact date for the installation of the next round of equipment, but Blue Waters is slated to be up and running at full capacity in late 2012. At its peak performance, the supercomputer will run at about 11.5 petaflops, making it one of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

According to the NCSA’s website, Blue Waters’ sustained performance will be over one petaflop, meaning one quadrillion calculations per second. Already, more than 40 NSF-funded scienctists are planning to operate their research on Blue Waters from remote locations.

With all the electricity it takes to power a supercomputer’s massive calculations, most systems reach extreme temperatures without proper cooling, which traditionally was provided by fans. However, Blue Waters is named for its cooling system, which uses naturally chilled water running through the computer’s facility to cool the racks of computing equipment.

Eventually, when the estimated 300 cabinets that will make up Blue Waters are installed, the supercomputer may increase campus energy consumption by up to one quarter of its current use. Though the National Petascale Computing Facility that houses the Blue Waters project received a rating of “Gold” LEED certification in early January, Facilities and Services spokesman Andy Blacker said the rating takes more into account than energy efficiency.

“In general, LEED is a total sustainability initiative,” he said. “Projects can earn LEED points for everything from site preparation to where the building materials come from.”

Nick Davis, Cray spokesman, said energy efficiency has been a top priority for Cray since the two entities entered into a contract. Blue Waters is one of the largest systems Cray has ever built, but not the first with water-cooling technology, which Cray has branded “ECOphlex.”

“Energy efficiency in supercomputers is important to us, and we take every consideration into account to make it as energy efficient as possible for our customers,” he said.