U.S. Department of Energy and Intel to Deliver First Exascale Supercomputer

Intel Corporation and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will deliver the first supercomputer with a performance of one exaFLOP in the United States. The system being developed at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory* in Chicago, named “Aurora,” will be used to dramatically advance scientific research and discovery. The contract is valued at more than $500 million and will be delivered to Argonne National Laboratory by Intel and sub-contractor Cray Inc.* in 2021.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190318005256/en/

Intel will deliver the Aurora supercomputer, the United States’ first exascale system, to Argonne National Laboratory in 2021. Aurora will incorporate a future Intel Xeon Scalable processor, Intel Optane DC Persistent memory, Intel’s Xe compute architecture and Intel OneAPI programming framework -- all anchored to Intel’s six key pillars of innovation. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)

The Aurora system’s exaFLOP of performance – equal to a “quintillion” floating point computations per second – combined with an ability to handle both traditional high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) will give researchers an unprecedented set of tools to address scientific problems at exascale. These breakthrough research projects range from developing extreme-scale cosmological simulations, discovering new approaches for drug response prediction and discovering materials for the creation of more efficient organic solar cells. The Aurora system will foster new scientific innovation and usher in new technological capabilities, furthering the United States’ scientific leadership position globally.

More: The Exascale Opportunity (Intel Blog) | U.S. Department of Energy and Intel to Deliver First Exascale Supercomputer (Video)

“Achieving exascale is imperative, not only to better the scientific community, but also to better the lives of everyday Americans,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “Aurora and the next generation of exascale supercomputers will apply HPC and AI technologies to areas such as cancer research, climate modeling and veterans’ health treatments. The innovative advancements that will be made with exascale will have an incredibly significant impact on our society.”