Oak Ridge Today

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

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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…]

Supercomputers: Summit at ORNL still number one

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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 again named number one on the TOP500 List, a semiannual ranking of the world’s fastest computing systems on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. (Photo credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

The 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory stayed at number one on the semiannual TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers released Monday.

The Sierra supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, climbed to number two from number three. That means the United States now has the top two systems in the world, a position that China held a year ago.

Summit, a water-cooled IBM-built supercomputer, debuted at number one on the TOP500 list in June. That was the first time since 2012 that the United States had the most powerful supercomputer in the world. The earlier top system, Titan, a Cray machine, is also located at ONRL. ORNL and LLNL are both U.S. Department of Energy laboratories.

Officials celebrated the launch of Summit in a ceremony attended by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on June 8. The supercomputer is capable of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second. That makes it about about eight times more powerful than Titan, its predecessor.

Besides being the most powerful, Summit has been described as the world’s smartest supercomputer, a machine that can learn. As big as two tennis courts, Summit has 4,608 compute servers. Each has two 22-core IBM Power9 central processing units (CPUs) and six NVIDIA Tesla V100 graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerators. That’s more than 9,000 conventional processors and nearly 28,000 graphics processors, or about 37,000 total. [Read more…]

Cyber security: Company will use ORNL random number generator for encryption

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Development of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s quantum random number generator began with basic components including an LED light, the source from which a field of quadrillions of photons are produced. The device can detect and measure the quantum statistics of photons present in the field and use each one as the basis for creating truly unique encryption keys that are impossible to decipher or predict. (Photo credit: Brian Williams/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

Development of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s quantum random number generator began with basic components including an LED light, the source from which a field of quadrillions of photons are produced. The device can detect and measure the quantum statistics of photons present in the field and use each one as the basis for creating truly unique encryption keys that are impossible to decipher or predict. (Photo credit: Brian Williams/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

A company called Qrypt Inc. will incorporate a quantum random number generator developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory into existing encryption techniques, strengthening cyber security, a press release said.

Qrypt has exclusively licensed the technology from ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. It’s intended to help defend against cyber attacks, including those posed by quantum computing.

Encryption uses codes or mathematical algorithms to make information such as messages or stored data unintelligible to unauthorized readers. Quantum computers make use of the quantum states of electrons or other particles to store and process information as quantum bits.

The press release said Qrypt will incorporate ORNL’s quantum random number generator into the company’s existing encryption platform. It will use inherent quantum randomness to create unique and unpredictable encryption keys enabling virtually impenetrable communications, the press release said. [Read more…]

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

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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…]

ORNL again has world’s most powerful supercomputer

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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…]

Fleischmann: Supercomputing race could change with Summit at ORNL

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The installation of the Summit supercomputer continues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Jan. 23, 2018, with the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and IBM teams receiving and installing compute nodes. Summit will come online in late 2018 for early science, and will be available to users in January 2019. (Image credit: Jason Richards/ORNL. Used under Creative Commons license)

The installation of the Summit supercomputer continues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Jan. 23, 2018, with the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and IBM teams receiving and installing compute nodes. Summit will come online in late 2018 for early science, and will be available to users in January 2019. (Image credit: Jason Richards/ORNL. Used under Creative Commons license)

 

The supercomputer being built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could change the race for supercomputing supremacy between the United States and China, U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann said during a budget hearing on Thursday.

The congressman said Summit, a 200-petaflop supercomputer at ORNL, will be commissioned this summer, and it will be the fastest supercomputer in the world, with twice the power of the top Chinese system. The Chinese machine is a 93-petaflop system known as Sunway TaihuLight.

During Thursday’s budget hearing, which featured Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Fleischmann said the United States and China are in a race for supercomputing supremacy. The race is critical to advances in science and technology that will drive economic growth, said Fleischmann, a Republican whose district includes Oak Ridge.

Citing a February 9 edition of Science magazine, Fleischmann said the U.S. dominated supercomputer rankings for decades but is now far behind. The combined power of the top two machines in China easily outpaces all 21 supercomputers operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, the country’s top funder of supercomputers, the congressman said.

But that could change with the commissioning of Summit this summer, Fleischmann said. [Read more…]

Two ORNL-led research teams receive $10.5 million for quantum computing research

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ORNL’s Pavel Lougovski, left, and Raphael Pooser will lead research teams working to advance quantum computing for scientific applications. (Photo credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

ORNL’s Pavel Lougovski, left, and Raphael Pooser will lead research teams working to advance quantum computing for scientific applications. (Photo credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Scott Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory

By harnessing the power of quantum mechanics, researchers hope to create quantum computers capable of simulating phenomenon at a scale and speed unthinkable on traditional architectures, an effort of great interest to agencies such as the U.S. Department of Energy tasked with tackling some of the world’s most complex science problems, a press release said.

DOE’s Office of Science has awarded two research teams, each headed by a member of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Quantum Information Science Group, more than $10 million over five years to both assess the feasibility of quantum architectures in addressing big science problems and to develop algorithms capable of harnessing the massive power predicted of quantum computing systems. The two projects are intended to work in concert to ensure synergy across DOE’s quantum computing research spectrum and maximize mutual benefits.

ORNL’s Raphael Pooser will oversee an effort titled, “Methods and Interfaces for Quantum Acceleration of Scientific Applications,” part of the larger Quantum Computing Testbed Pathfinder program funded by DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research office. [Read more…]