Behind the Nobel: SDSC's Decade of Computing Support for IceCube Included a 51,500-GPU Cloud Demonstration
A long-standing collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San Diego has helped provide the computing expertise behind the search for high-energy neutrinos from space, work recognized this week with the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, SDSC said in a release issued October 7.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize on October 6 to Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin" (GSM reported the award on October 6). At the South Pole, IceCube uses light sensors embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice to detect the rare interactions of neutrinos, particles that usually pass through matter unnoticed. Halzen first presented his vision for the observatory in 1988; completed in 2011, IceCube went on to detect high-energy neutrinos originating beyond our solar system, establishing neutrinos as cosmic messengers and opening a new field of astronomy.
"IceCube's discoveries depend not only on the detector at the South Pole, but also on our ability to simulate and interpret what it observes," Halzen said, adding that the partnership with SDSC has brought computing expertise and resources to that challenge for more than a decade. SDSC Director Frank Würthwein explained that high-energy light is absorbed before it reaches Earth, while neutrinos can travel across the universe largely undisturbed, so many of the universe's most extreme events can be studied only with neutrinos or gravitational waves.
In one particularly ambitious demonstration on November 16, 2019, SDSC and the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center ran an approximately two-hour experiment using some 51,500 graphics processing units (GPUs) across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, spanning 28 cloud regions in North America, Europe and Asia, with HTCondor software integrating the cloud GPUs into a single resource pool. SDSC said IceCube's computing needs have also helped inform its approach to systems including Expanse.
Source: San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego, news release issued October 7, 2026.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 南极冰立方中微子天文台 / The IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. Photo: Martin Wolf, NSF IceCube
