Aurora (supercomputer)

Aurora is a planned supercomputer, originally contracted to be completed by 2018 but through a series of delays at the prime contractor, Intel Corporation, now planned to be completed in 2023.[1] It was originally planned be the worlds’ fastest supercomputer with over 2 exaflops, however a series of delays have cast that into doubt. It is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and designed by Intel and Cray for the Argonne National Laboratory.[2] It will have c. 2 exaFLOPS in computing power which is approximately a quintillion (260 or 1018) calculations per second[3][4] and will have an expected cost of US$500 million.[5] It will follow Frontier, which was the world's first exascale supercomputer in 2022 and as of June 2023 the world's fastest.[6] Olivier Franza is the chief architect and principal investigator of this design.[7]

Aurora
Planned supercomputer
Design
ManufacturerIntel & Cray
Release date2023
PriceUS$500M
Casing
Power≤ 60 MW
System
CPUIntel Xeon Max
Memory10 petabytes
Storage230 petabytes
FLOPS2 exaFLOPS (expected speed)
PredecessorTheta

History

In 2013 DOE presented their exascale vision of one exaFLOP at 20 MW by 2020.[8] Aurora was first announced in 2015 and to be finished in 2018. It was expected to have a speed of 180 petaFLOPS[9] which would be around the speed of Summit. Aurora was meant to be the most powerful supercomputer at the time of its launch and to be built by Cray with Intel processors. Later, in 2017, Intel announced that Aurora would be delayed to 2021 but scaled up to 1 exaFLOP. In March 2019, DOE said that it would build the first supercomputer with a performance of one exaFLOP in the United States in 2021.[10] In October 2020, DOE said that Aurora would be delayed again for a further 6 months and would no longer be the first exascale computer in the US.[11] In late October 2021 Intel announced Aurora would now exceed 2 exaFLOPS in peak double-precision compute.[12] The system has been fully installed.[13]

Planned usage

Planned functions include research on nuclear fusion,[14] low carbon technologies, subatomic particles, cancer and cosmology.[15][16] It will also develop new materials that will be useful for batteries and more efficient solar cells.[16] It is to be available to the general scientific community.[17]

Architecture

Aurora will have over nine thousand nodes, with each node being composed of two Intel Xeon Max[18] processors, six Intel Max series GPUs and a unified memory architecture, providing a maximum computing power of 130 teraFLOPS per node.[19] It will have around 10 petabytes of memory and 230 petabytes of storage.

The machine is estimated to consume around 60 MW.[20] For comparison, the fastest computer in the world today, Frontier uses 21 MW while Summit uses 13 MW.

See also

References
  1. Hemsoth, Nicole (September 23, 2021). "A Status Check on Global Exascale Ambitions". The Next Platform. Archived from the original on October 16, 2021. Retrieved October 15, 2021.
  2. Zarley, B. David (March 18, 2019). "America's first exascale supercomputer to be built by 2021". The Verge. Archived from the original on June 5, 2021. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  3. Malhotra, Vanshika (March 19, 2019). "'Aurora' Will Be The First Exascale Supercomputer Of America". Archived from the original on June 5, 2021. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  4. Smith, Ryan. "El Capitan Supercomputer Detailed: AMD CPUs & GPUs To Drive 2 Exaflops of Compute [sic]". anandtech. Archived from the original on March 4, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  5. "Intel and Cray are building a $500 million 'exascale' supercomputer for Argonne National Lab". Archived from the original on February 10, 2023. Retrieved September 26, 2020.
  6. "Top 500 List". Top 500 List. Top500.org. June 1, 2023. Retrieved July 15, 2023.
  7. Intel Corporation, "Architecting the Future of Supercomputing", https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/architecting-future-supercomputing.html#gs.4sfi85
  8. "DOE Exascale Initiative" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on March 30, 2021.
  9. Burt, Jeff. "Intel, Cray Awarded $200 Million to Build Powerful Supercomputer". eWEEK. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  10. "The Argonne National Laboratory Supercomputer will Enable High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence at Exascale by 2021". Archived from the original on March 19, 2019.
  11. Black, Doug. "DOE Under Secretary for Science Dabbar's Exascale Update: Frontier to Be First, Aurora to Be Monitored". insideHPC. Archived from the original on October 28, 2020. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
  12. "Intel Innovation Spotlights New Products, Technology and Tools for..." Intel. Archived from the original on October 27, 2021. Retrieved October 27, 2021.
  13. Intel Corproation, "Aurora Supercomputer Blade Installation Complete", https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/aurora-supercomputer-blade-installation-complete.html#gs.20v5fr
  14. "Using Exascale Supercomputers to Make Clean Fusion Energy Possible". September 2, 2022. Archived from the original on December 29, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  15. Johnson, Rob. "Aurora Supercomputer to Assist in the Fight Against Cancer". TECHNOLOGY NETWORKS. Archived from the original on June 5, 2021. Retrieved September 26, 2020.
  16. "Energy Department to spend 200 million on new aurora supercomputer". NBC News. Archived from the original on June 5, 2021. Retrieved September 26, 2020.
  17. "Aurora, Argonne supercomputer will be the most powerful in the U.S., will be installed at Argonne National Laboratory in the Chicago area". Archived from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved September 26, 2020.
  18. Papka, Michael (December 8, 2020), IEEE Chicago and ACM Chicago webinar: Supercomputing and ALCF - Dec 7 2020, archived from the original on November 15, 2021, retrieved December 9, 2020
  19. "Intel's 2021 Exascale Vision in Aurora". anandtech. Archived from the original on June 5, 2021. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  20. "How Argonne Is Preparing for Exascale in 2022". HPCwire. September 8, 2021. Archived from the original on June 5, 2022. Retrieved June 14, 2022.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.