Baku, April 10, AZERTAC
Intel Corporation today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) has awarded Intel Federal LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation, a contract to deliver two next-generation supercomputers to Argonne National Laboratory.
The contract is part of the DOE’s multimillion dollar initiative to build state-of-the-art supercomputers at Argonne, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that will be five to seven times more powerful than today’s top supercomputers. The joint Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore (CORAL) will help to advance U.S. leadership in scientific research and maintain its position at the forefront of next-generation exascale computing for years to come.
Intel was selected as the prime contractor and will work with Cray Inc. as the system integrator and manufacturer of these next-generation high-performance computing (HPC) systems for the ALCF. The largest system, to be called Aurora, is based on Intel’s HPC scalable system framework and will be a next-generation Cray “Shasta” supercomputer. The Aurora system will be delivered in 2018 and have a peak performance of 180 petaflops, making it the world’s most powerful system currently announced to date.
A second system, to be named Theta, will serve as an early production system for the ALCF. To be delivered in the 2016, the system will provide performance of 8.5 petaflops while requiring only 1.7 megawatts of power.
“The selection of Intel to deliver the Aurora supercomputer is validation of our unique position to lead a new era in HPC,” said Raj Hazra, vice president, Data Center Group and general manager, Technical Computing Group at Intel. “Intel’s HPC scalable system framework enables balanced, scalable and efficient systems while extending the ecosystem’s decades of software investment to future generations. We look forward to the numerous scientific discoveries and the far-reaching impacts on society that Aurora will enable.”