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DOE still has top two supercomputers, including Summit at ORNL

Posted at 12:44 pm November 18, 2019
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

The Summit supercomputer, a 200-petaflop IBM system that is the world’s most powerful, is pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)

The U.S. Department of Energy still has the two most powerful supercomputers in the world, including Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, according to a semiannual list released Monday.

It’s the fourth time in the past two years that Summit, an IBM-built supercomputer, has been number one on the TOP500 list of of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

The United States displaced China at the top of the list last year, in June. Two years ago, in November 2017, China had the top two systems in the world.

Summit debuted at number one in June 2018. That was the first time since 2012 that the United States had the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Summit retained the top spot in November 2018 and again in June 2019.

The Sierra supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, climbed to number two from number three in November 2018. It remained at number two on the June list and again on the list released Monday, meaning it’s been number two on three versions of the list in the past two years.

Summit and Sierra are both IBM-built supercomputers that use Power9 central processing units (CPUs) and NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphics processing units (GPUs).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, Slider, Top Stories, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: China, exaflop, High Performance Linpack, IBM, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Milky Way-2A, most powerful supercomputer, National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Office of Science, ORNL, petaflops, Rick Perry, Sierra, summit, Sunway, Sunway TaihuLight, supercomputer, Tianhe-2A, Titan, Top500, U.S. Department of Energy, United States

DOE: New $600 million supercomputer at ORNL will be world’s most powerful

Posted at 8:57 am May 7, 2019
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

Pictured above from left during an announcement for the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Tuesday, May 7, 2019, are Energy Secretary Rick Perry; ORNL Director Thomas Zacharia; Peter Ungaro, Cray president and chief executive officer; and Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Note: This story was last updated at 3 p.m. May 21.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced a contract with Cray Inc. to build the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It is expected to be the world’s most powerful supercomputer when it debuts in 2021.

The contract with Cray is valued at more than $600 million for the system and technology development, a press release said.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry was at ORNL on Tuesday morning to make the announcement.

“This is a big deal,” Perry said. “Frontier’s record-breaking performance will ensure our country’s ability to lead the world in science that improves the lives and economic prosperity of all Americans and the entire world. Frontier will accelerate innovation in AI (artificial intelligence) by giving American researchers world-class data and computing resources to ensure the next great inventions are made in the United States.”

Besides the supercomputing announcement on Tuesday, Perry also delivered the keynote speech at InnovationXLab: Advanced Manufacturing Summit at ORNL.

Frontier is expected to perform at greater than 1.5 exaflops. It will be able to solve calculations up to 50 times faster than today’s top supercomputers, exceeding a quintillion, or 1018, calculations per second, the press release said. That’s a billion billion calculations per second.

Oak Ridge Today has previously reported that Frontier would be built at ORNL. But the contract with Cray and its value and the specific performance estimate of more than 1.5 exaflops are all new announcements. The contract award includes technology development funding, a center of excellence, several early-delivery systems, the main Frontier system, and multi-year systems support. The Frontier system is expected to be delivered in 2021, and acceptance is expected in 2022. 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, Slider, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: AMD, Argonne National Laboratory, artificial intelligence, Aurora, China, Cray, DOE, exaflop, exascale, exascale computing, Frontier, Lamar Alexander, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lisa Su, Morgan McCorkle, most powerful supercomputer, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, petaflop, Peter Ungaro, quantum computing, Rick Perry, summit, supercomputer, supercomputing, Thomas Zacharia, Titan, U.S. Department of Energy

(For members) Three national labs building exascale computers

Posted at 6:39 pm February 4, 2019
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pictured above. (Photo by ORNL)

The central campus at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pictured above. (Photo by ORNL)

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pictured above. (Photo by ORNL)

Three national laboratories, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are building new computer systems that could be many times more powerful than today’s top supercomputers.

The new machines are exascale systems. None have been delivered yet, but the planning for them started more than a year ago and the new high-performance systems could be delivered to the three laboratories in the next several years. Planning for the exascale computers was under way even before the world’s most powerful supercomputer, a petaflop system called Summit at ORNL, was unveiled in June 2018.

Exascale computers could be 50 to 100 more powerful than today’s petaflop computers, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Besides ORNL, they could be located at Argonne National Laboratory southwest of Chicago and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco. The first system is expected at Argonne, followed by a second system at ORNL.

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Filed Under: National Nuclear Security Administration, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, Slider, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: ANL, Argonne National Laboratory, Aurora, Christopher J. Kramer, Collaboration of Oak Ridge Argonne and Livermore, computer systems, CORAL, Cray, DOE Office of Science, El Capitan, exascale, exascale computers, Frontier, Intel, Jeremy Thomas, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, LLNL, Mark Anderson, Morgan McCorkle, most powerful supercomputer, National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, petaflop computers, petaflops, request for proposals, RFP, Rick Perry, summit, supercomputers, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, UT-Battelle LLC

For first time since 2012, US has top supercomputer in world

Posted at 1:37 pm June 25, 2018
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer was named number one on the TOP500 List, a semiannual ranking of the world’s fastest computing systems on Monday, June 25, 2018. (Photo credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer was named number one on the TOP500 List, a semiannual ranking of the world’s fastest computing systems on Monday, June 25, 2018. (Photo credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

For the first time since 2012, the United States has the most powerful supercomputer in the world, and it’s again located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The new supercomputer, called Summit, is capable of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second. Equipment delivery for Summit was completed in March, and officials celebrated the launch of the supercomputer in a ceremony attended by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on June 8.

The last time the United States had the top supercomputer was in November 2012. That machine, which is still in use, is named Titan, and it’s also at ORNL. It’s now number seven on the semiannual TOP500 list, which was released Monday.

China had held the top spot since June 2013, and the country had held the top two spots since June 2016. That ended with Monday’s TOP500 announcement. Previously at number one and number two, the top two Chinese supercomputers have fallen to number two and number four.

ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory, now has two of the top seven systems on the list. They are Summit at number one and Titan at number seven. The United States now has six of the top 10 machines, according to the TOP500 list. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, Slider, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure, China, Chuck Fleischmann, Cray, exascale computing, High Performance Linpack, hybrid CPU-GPU architecture, IBM, IBM Power9 central processing unit, ISC High Performance conference, Jaguar, Japan, Lamar Alexander, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lenovo, Linux operating system, Mellanox EDR InfiniBand network, Milky Way-2A, most powerful supercomputer, NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphics processing unit, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, petaflops, quantum computing, Red Hat, Sierra, smartest supercomputer, summit, Sunway TaihuLight, supercomputer, supercomputers, Thomas Zacharia, Tianhe-2, Tianhe-2A, Titan, Top500, Top500 List, U.S. Department of Energy, United States

ORNL again has world’s most powerful supercomputer

Posted at 9:03 pm June 8, 2018
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

Pictured above being interviewed by a CNBC television crew before a ceremony on Friday afternoon, June 8, 2018, for the new Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are Ginni Rometty, left, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of IBM; Rick Perry, second from right, U.S. Department of Energy secretary; and Jensen Huang, right, founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Pictured above being interviewed by a CNBC television crew before a ceremony on Friday afternoon, June 8, 2018, for the new Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are Ginni Rometty, left, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of IBM; Rick Perry, second from right, U.S. Department of Energy secretary; and Jensen Huang, right, founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)

Note: This story was last updated at 6 p.m. June 9.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory again has the world’s most powerful supercomputer. It’s also the world’s smartest supercomputer, a machine that can learn—and run software that will write software.

The supercomputer, called Summit, is capable of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second. During a Friday afternoon ceremony, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Summit can save 30 years worth of desktop data in one hour. It is millions times faster than a really good high-end desktop, said Ginni Rometty, IBM chair, president, and chief executive officer.

A water-cooled IBM system, Summit is presumed to have bumped China from the top spot, at least among open-science systems or supercomputers that aren’t classified. It has successfully run the world’s first exascale scientific calculation.

“We know we’re in competition, and it matters who gets there first,” Perry told several hundred people at the Friday afternoon ceremony at ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. “We reached a pinnacle today.”

Researchers at ORNL could find the cure for Alzheimer’s disease or cancer, Perry said. Winning the global supercomputing race could have benefits for all of humanity, said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder, president, and CEO. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, Slider, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: China, Chuck Fleischmann, Cray, exascale computing, Frontier, Ginni Rometty, IBM, Jack C. Wells, Jensen Huang, Larmar Alexander, Milky Way-2, most powerful supercomputer, NVIDIA, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, quantum computing, Rick Perry, smartest supercomputer, summit, Sunway TaihuLight, supercomputer, Tianhe-2, Top500, U.S. Department of Energy, United States, world's most powerful supercomputer, world's smartest supercomputer

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