IBM Announces Supercomputer to Propel Sciences Forward
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its next generation supercomputing project, Blue Gene/Q, will provide an ultra-scale technical computing platform to solve the most challenging problems facing engineers and scientists at faster, more energy efficient, and more reliable rates than ever before. Blue Gene/Q is expected to predict the path of hurricanes, analyze the ocean floor to discover oil, simulate nuclear weapons performance and decode gene sequences.
When it is fully deployed in 2012 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the system, named “Sequoia”, is expected to achieve 20 petaflops at peak performance, marking it as one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. The capabilities this system represents will help ensure United States leadership in high performance computing (HPC) and the science it makes possible. Moreover, Blue Gene/Q is expected to become the world’s most power-efficient computer, churning out 2 gigaflops per watt.
LLNL, a premier multidisciplinary national security laboratory for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), applies some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to maintaining the nation’s aging nuclear deterrent without testing, as well as such challenges as grid and network management, energy research and climate change. IBM will deploy 96 racks beginning as early as December of this year.
“It is this emphasis on reliability, scalability and low power consumption that draws the interest of NNSA to this machine and its architecture,” said Bob Meisner, head of NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and Computing program. “This machine will provide an ideal platform to research and develop strategies to assure that our most challenging codes run efficiently on multi-core architectures. Such capabilities will provide tremendous information in formulating our code development strategy as we face the challenges of exascale simulation and advance the state of the art in simulation science, advances necessary to ensure our nation’s security without nuclear testing.”
Announced earlier in 2011, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) will also implement Blue Gene/Q to stoke economic growth and improve U.S. competitiveness for such challenges as designing electric car batteries, understanding climate change and exploring the evolution of the universe. The 10-petaflop system, named “Mira”, will provide a strong science and technology engine that will fuel national innovation. Argonne is one of the DOE’s oldest and largest labs for science and engineering research, located outside of Chicago.
“At Argonne, we are already exploiting the power of Mira through our Early Science program, which provides a broad range of researchers the opportunity to work with IBM and Argonne technical staff to adapt their codes to Mira’s unique architecture,” said Mike Papka, Deputy Associate Laboratory Director, ANL. “This will ensure that Mira will be prepared to run challenging computational science problems on the first day of operations.”