Oak Ridge Today

ORNL’s Summit remains world’s most powerful supercomputer

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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 Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory remains the world’s most powerful, according to a ranking list released Monday.

It’s the third time that Summit, a IBM-built supercomputer, has been number one on the semiannual TOP500 list of of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. 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.

The Sierra supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, remained at number two on the list released Monday, after climbing there from number three in November. The United States continues to have the top two systems in the world, a position that China held a year and a half ago.

Officials celebrated the launch of Summit in a ceremony attended by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on June 8, 2018. The supercomputer is capable of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second. That makes it about eight times more powerful than Titan, its predecessor, which was once the world’s fastest.

Summit delivered a record 148.6 petaflops on a benchmark test called High Performance Linpack, or HPL, a TOP500 press release said Monday. That was a slight improvement from six months ago, when Summit scored 143.5 petaflops. Summit debuted at 122.3 petaflops in June 2018.

[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…]

ORNL’s Bland receives DOE Secretary’s Appreciation Award for computing leadership

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Buddy Bland (Photo courtesy ORNL)

Buddy Bland (Photo courtesy ORNL)

Arthur “Buddy” Bland, program director of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has received the Secretary’s Appreciation Award for his nearly four decades of achievements in providing high-performance computing resources for science, a press release said.

Bland was cited by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry for his work “in recognition of nearly 40 years of leadership in delivering high-performance computing resources to address the nation’s science and engineering challenges across a wide array of disciplines and for critical contributions to the success of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and sustained U.S. leadership in high-performance computing and computational science.”

Bland led the project to deliver the Summit supercomputer, launched June 8 at ORNL as “the world’s most powerful and smartest supercomputer” with a peak performance capability of 200 petaflops, or 200,000 trillion calculations per second. Summit was listed number one in the TOP500 list released on Monday. [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…]

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…]

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

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

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

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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)

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

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Titan Supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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

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Titan Supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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

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Jeff Nichols and Titan at ORNL

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…]

Chinese supercomputer stays No. 1, Titan at ORNL still No. 2

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Jeff Nichols and Titan at ORNL

Jeff Nichols, associate director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in front of Titan, which was the world’s top supercomputer in November 2012 but is now ranked No. 2. (Photo courtesy of ORNL)

 

For the fourth consecutive time, Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, has retained its position as the world’s number one system. Meanwhile, Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was the top supercomputer in November 2012, remains number two.

Tianhe-2 is capable of performing at 33.86 petaflops, or 33.86 quadrillions of calculations per second, on a benchmark test known as Linpack.

The rankings are from the 44th edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, which was announced Monday in Mannheim, Germany; Berkeley, California; and Knoxville. Tianhe-2 has been in the top spot four consecutive times, and Titan has been number two each time. [Read more…]

Chinese supercomputer still No. 1, Titan at ORNL remains No. 2

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Jeff Nichols and Titan at ORNL

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. 2. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

A Chinese supercomputer kept its No. 1 spot, and Titan at Oak Ridge National Laboratory stayed at No. 2 in the latest semiannual ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

The Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2, was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, and it’s been in the top spot three times in a row on the Top500 List. Tianhe-2 bumped Titan from the top spot in June 2013.

The Chinese supercomputer performed at 33.86 petaflops—that’s 33.86 quadrillion calculations per second—on a test known as the Linpack benchmark, the press release said. Titan performed at 17.59 petaflops.

There was little change among the ranking of the world’s Top 10 supercomputers in the latest edition of the closely watched list, a press release said. The only new entry was at number 10—a 3.14-petaflop Cray XC30 installed at an undisclosed U.S. government site.

The Top500 list was announced Monday morning. The list is compiled by Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and Martin Meuer of Prometeus, Germany. [Read more…]