Sunway TaihuLight Archives - Oak Ridge Today

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)

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

Posted at 3:16 pm March 18, 2018
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

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…]

China passes U.S. in number of top supercomputers; ORNL’s Titan drops to 5th

Posted at 9:49 am November 13, 2017
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pictured above. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

China has passed the United States in the total number of top ranked supercomputers, and Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has dropped from fourth to fifth on the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

The TOP500 list is released twice a year, once in June and once in November. It is based on a benchmark test known as Linpack.

Titan at ORNL dropped from third to fourth in June, bumped from the number three spot by the upgraded Piz Daint, a Cray XC50 system installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Titan is capable of 17.59 petaflops. A petaflop is one quadrillion calculations per second. That’s 1,000 trillion calculations per second. Piz Daint is capable of 19.59 petaflops.

That power is useful in scientific research. At ORNL, Titan is used for research in areas such as materials science, nuclear energy, combustion, and climate science. ORNL is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory.

Titan slipped one more spot in this month’s list, from fourth to fifth. It was displaced by the upgraded Gyoukou supercomputer. That is a ZettaScaler-2.2 system capable of 19.14 petaflops and deployed at Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the home of the Earth Simulator. [Read more…]

ORNL building world’s smartest supercomputer

Posted at 11:31 am August 3, 2017
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

This a graphical representation of the Summit computer cabinets. It is not a photograph of the final design. (Image courtesy ORNL/Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility)

Note: This story was last updated at 10 a.m. Aug. 8.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Wednesday said it is building the world’s smartest supercomputer.

The new supercomputer is called Summit. It will be located in a new data center next to Titan, which is now the fourth most powerful supercomputer in the world.

Summit will be 5-10 times faster than Titan, ORNL said. It will move data five to 10 times faster, store eight times more data, and perform many more calculations simultaneously than Titan, the lab said in information provided by spokesperson Morgan McCorkle.

Summit will be the world’s smartest supercomputer because of its enormous memory and data handling capabilities as well as its unique machine learning processor design, McCorkle said.

“The first of Summit’s cabinets arrived Monday, and our team is in the process of uncrating and putting them in place,” McCorkle said in response to questions from Oak Ridge Today. [Read more…]

ORNL’s Titan drops to number four on list of world’s most powerful supercomputers

Posted at 10:06 am June 19, 2017
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was once ranked as the world’s most powerful supercomputer, but it is now ranked number four. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

Note: This story was updated at 10:40 a.m.

Once the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory dropped to number four on a list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers released Monday.

Titan, a Cray XK7 system, was bumped from the number three spot by the upgraded Piz Daint, a Cray XC50 system installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre.

China continues to have the world’s two most powerful supercomputers.

The TOP50 List of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is based on a benchmark test known as Linpack. The list is released twice each year, once in June and again in November. The 49th edition of the TOP500 List was released Monday in conjunction with the opening session of the ISC High Performance conference, which is taking place this week in Frankfurt, Germany. [Read more…]

Supercomputers: China still has top two, ORNL’s Titan remains No. 3

Posted at 1:00 am November 23, 2016
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was once ranked as the world’s most powerful supercomputer, but it was ranked number three in November 2016 in the semiannual TOP500 List. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

China still has the two fastest supercomputers in the world, and Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory remains number three.

The semi-annual TOP500 List of the world’s top supercomputers was released last Monday, November 14, at a conference in Salt Lake City.

Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory, has achieved 17.59 petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second.

The most powerful supercomputer, a relatively new Chinese supercomputer named Sunway TaihuLight, is capable of 93 petaflops. It is built entirely using processors designed and made in China. In June, it displaced Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that had claimed the number one spot on the six previous TOP500 lists.

Tianhe-2, the number two system, achieved a speed of 33.86 petaflops, or more than 33,000 trillion calculations per second, in a test known as the LINPACK benchmark. That ranking program uses a series of linear equations to test computer systems around the world. [Read more…]

New 200-petaflop supercomputer to succeed Titan at ORNL

Posted at 1:11 am July 8, 2016
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

This a graphical representation of the Summit computer cabinets. It is not a photograph of the final design. (Image courtesy ORNL/November 2014)

A new 200-petaflop supercomputer will succeed Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it could be available to scientists and researchers in 2018, a spokesperson said this week.

The new IBM supercomputer, named Summit, could about double the computing power of what is now the world’s fastest machine, a Chinese system named Sunway TaihuLight, according to a seminannual list of the world’s top supercomputers released in June.

Sunway TaihuLight is capable of 93 petaflops, according to the list, the TOP500 list. A petaflop is one quadrillion calculations per second. That’s 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

Summit, which is expected to start operating at ORNL early in 2018, is one of three supercomputers that the U.S. Department of Energy expects to exceed 100 petaflops at three U.S. Department of Energy laboratories in 2018. The three planned systems are:

the 200-petaflop Summit at ORNL, which is expected to be available to users in early 2018;
a 150-petaflop machine known as Sierra at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco in mid-2018; and
a 180-petaflop supercomputer called Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago in late 2018.

[Read more…]

New Chinese supercomputer named world’s fastest; ORNL’s Titan drops to No. 3

Posted at 9:40 am June 20, 2016
By Oak Ridge Today Staff Leave a Comment

Jeff Nichols, associate director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in front of Titan, which was the world’s fastest supercomputer in November 2012 but is now ranked No. 3. (File photo courtesy ORNL/October 2013)

China maintained its number one ranking in the latest edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers, but with a new system built entirely using processors designed and made in China.

China now has the top two supercomputers on the semiannual TOP500 list, and Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has dropped from number two to number three.

The new Chinese supercomputer, Sunway TaihuLight, is capable of 93 petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second, a press release said.

It displaced Tianhe-2, an Intel-based Chinese supercomputer that had claimed the number one spot on the past six TOP500 lists. Tianhe-2 achieved a speed of 33.86 petaflops, or more than 33,000 trillion calculations per second, in a test known as the LINPACK benchmark.

Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory, achieved 17.59 petaflops.

Titan was the top system for a short time. It was number one in November 2012, but it was bumped to number two behind Tianhe-2 in June 2013. This is the first time it has been number three.

The latest list marks the first time since the start of the TOP500 that the United States is not home to the largest number of systems. With a surge in industrial and research installations registered over the last few years, China leads with 167 systems and the U.S. is second with 165. China also leads the performance category, thanks to the number one and number two systems, the press release said. [Read more…]