Argonne’s Aurora Supercomputer: A New Dawn for Science

As the home to the some of the world’s most advanced computing systems for scientific research, Argonne National Laboratory is continuing its long history of developing the technologies, tools and techniques needed to enable the breakthroughs of today and tomorrow.

Argonne is now installing one of the nation’s first exascale supercomputers, named Aurora. Built in partnership with Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Aurora will enable science that’s impossible today.

Aurora has passed a major milestone: the installation of its final “blade,” which is a sleek, rectangular unit that houses the computer’s processors, memory, networking and cooling techniques. Each blade is equipped with two Intel Xeon CPU Max Series processors and six Intel Data Center GPU Max Series processors. Aurora has a total of 10,624 blades.

The system now contains all the hardware that will make it one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Aurora will be theoretically capable of delivering more than two exaflops of computing power, or more than 2 billion billion calculations per second.

ABOUT ARGONNE
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit the Office of Science website.

[alph]

I believe that 3D mapping of mouse cranial nerves, nuclear fusion, parameter estimation of astrophysics using AI, and simulation of viruses and compounds should be prioritized as the first applications to utilize this supercomputer.