Having worked at ANL in the past on other supercomputers, this is an especially impressive and interesting contract. 180PF, even in 2018 is by any definition an absolute monster of a system.
It's also very interesting that the contract was awarded to Cray and not to IBM. ANL's first two supers, Intrepid and Mira, are both IBM Blue Genes.
This must be a very exciting day for ANL and Cray. Congrats!
Both Cray and IBM were in the competition for the next supercomputers for:
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
- Argonne National Naboratory (ANL)
IBM won LLNL and ORNL to create the upcoming Sierra and Summit Supercomputers. We heard down the grapevine that ANL wanted an IBM based system as well, but due to the rules of the competition they were given the Cray system.
So the rumour goes anyways, I'm not in the inner circle.
That doesn't surprise me at all. The DOE keeps more options open by selecting different vendors for the same generation installs. In the last generation, LLNL and ANL were IBM and ORNL was the Cray.
That said, I'm long since out of whatever circle it was that I was in (certainly not the inner one!) as well so I speak with no authority whatsoever.
This will be a 10x improvement in the 6 years since Titan was built and will get within nearly 20% of an exaflop. How does this not constitute a huge step toward exascale computing?
So was Computer World magazine, but wishing don't make it so. It's hard stuff! If we had the gear tomorrow, I sincerely doubt anyone would know how to write efficient applications for it.
For some reason, I don't think it's coincidence that Guangzhou Supercomputer Center got put on the US Technology “Denial List” and Argonne awarded Cray a 180 Petaflop sale.
The DOE announced the awards for ORNL and LLNL last November, and there wasn't a similar announcement about then, I don't see why today's is any more relevant.
That said, I doubt it comes as a surprise to the Chinese government, but it's kind of an ironic stick in the eye given what the DOE's mission is (and what the supercomputer at LLNL is used for). I suppose I don't blame the US government as I'm guessing the law prevents US companies from exporting devices used for nuclear weapons, but it's definitely a dick move.
Currently, there is only one thing the Chinese supercomputers are good at. Running Linpack. Give it time, and the Chinese will build up the library and experience to fully take advantage of the resource. In the mean time, we're not going to help them much.
The single biggest consumer of Supercomputing cycles is the DOE for Fusion^H^H^H^H^HSuperNova simulations. They'll chew this up in no time. At least this is being located at the LCF, so it will be open to all sorts of academic usage, too.
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Teach me not to read the news earlier. Not a bright move, cutting off the Chinese from Xeons and the like will only drive them to develop all the tech themselves. While I do not believe we should be handing them tech on a silver platter, it is actually worse to cut them off.
