National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center

Center News 59
NERSC’s New Home: Shyh Wang Hall
One of the biggest things to happen at NERSC in 2015 was the center’s move back to the main
Berkeley Lab campus and into Shyh Wang Hall, a brand new, state-of-the-art facility for
computational science. Wang Hall is named in honor of Shyh Wang, a professor at UC Berkeley
for 34 years who was known for his research in semiconductors, magnetic resonances and
semiconductor lasers, which laid the foundation for optoelectronics.
Wang Hall is named in honor
of Shyh Wang, a professor
at UC Berkeley for 34 years
who was known for his
research in semiconductors,
magnetic resonances and
semiconductor lasers.
The $143 million structure, financed by the University of California, provides an open, collaborative
environment bringing together nearly 300 staff members from NERSC, ESnet and the
Computational Research Division, plus colleagues from nearby UC Berkeley, to encourage new
ideas and approaches to solving some of the nation’s biggest scientific challenges.
The 149,000 square foot facility, built on a hillside overlooking the UC Berkeley campus and San
Francisco Bay, houses one of the most energy-efficient computing centers anywhere, tapping into the
region’s mild climate to cool NERSC’s supercomputers and eliminating the need for mechanical
cooling. The building features large, open bays on the lowest level, facing west toward the Pacific
Ocean, that draw in natural air conditioning for the computing systems. In addition, heat captured
from those systems is recirculated to heat the building.
The new building was also designed to be flexible to meet the needs of next-generation HPC
systems. The building has 12.5 megawatts of power (upgradable to over 40 megawatts) and is