ORNL’s Titan Supercomputer Retains No. 2 Spot on World TOP500 List
NS&D Monitor
6/27/2014
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan supercomputer, a Cray XK7 system with a hybrid architecture, is still America’s most powerful computer, and has retained its No. 2 position on the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The new list released this week was still topped by China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer by a large margin, with a performance capability of 33.86 petaflops. That’s more than 33 million billion mathematical calculations per second. The machine was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology.
The No. 3 machine is Lawrence Livermore’s Sequoia, an IBM Blue Gene system, and No. 5 is Argonne National Laboratory’s Mira, also an IBM Blue Gene system. All told, the United States has 233 of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers, far and away the most of any country. However, that number is down from 265 on the previous list released in November 2013. The number of Chinese systems on the list rose from 63 to 76.
ORNL Working on New Supercomputer
Meanwhile, the battle for computing supremacy continues, and the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration are working together to get the most of their resources. ORNL is working with Livermore and Argonne a project that will provide each of the labs with a next-generation supercomputer and continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible. CORAL (Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore) is supposed to produce three supercomputers, using two different architectures, and the systems are supposed to be available in the 2017-2018 time frame.
Officials are not discussing much detail at this point, but more than 100 experts at the lab have been reviewing proposals and establishing the architectural future of the program. Buddy Bland, who directs the Leadership Computing Facility at ORNL, said the three-lab team has selected the “winning set of systems.” However, the reviews are still underway, and it will probably be months before any contracts are awarded, Bland said. “We hope to be able to issue the first contracts in the fall of this year,” Bland said. “Until the contracts are approved by DOE and awarded, we can’t say anything about the winners.” Bland explained: “When we jointly evaluated the proposals we were not looking to find the single ‘best’ system, but rather the best set of two systems that would provide the best value to the U.S. government.”
He said the would-be vendors were chosen for negotiations in late March and the winning companies were notified at that time. “Of course, until there is a contract, those selections are subject to change if the contract negotiations don’t come to fruition,” the lab official said. The 2017 replacements for ORNL’s Titan, Livermore’s Sequoia and Argonne’s Mira are supposed to have a capability up to 200 petaflops—far beyond any machine that’s operating today.
