Aurora (supercomputer)

Aurora is a planned supercomputer to be completed in 2021. It will be the United States' second exascale computer. It is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and designed by Intel & Cray for the Argonne National Laboratory.[1] It will have ≈1 exaFLOPS in computing power which is equal to a quintillion (260 or 1018) calculations per second[2][3] and will have an expected cost of US$500 million.[4] It will follow Frontier, which is now expected to be the United States' first exascale computer and is also planned for 2021.

Aurora
Design
ManufacturerIntel & Cray
Release date2021
PriceUS$500M
Casing
Power≤ 60 MW
System
CPUIntel Xeon
Memory10 petabytes
Storage230 petabytes
FLOPS1 exaFLOPS (expected speed)
PredecessorTheta

History

Aurora was first announced in 2015 and to be finished in 2018. It was expected to have a speed of 180 petaFLOPS[5] which would be around the speed of Summit. Aurora was meant to be the most powerful supercomputer at the time of its launch and to be built by Cray with Intel processors. Later, in 2017, Intel announced that Aurora would be delayed to 2021 but scaled up to 1 exaFLOP. In October 2020, DOE said that Aurora would be delayed again for a further 6 months and would no longer be the first exascale computer in the US.[6]

Scientific research

Planned functions include research on low carbon technologies, subatomic particles, cancer and cosmology.[7][8] It will also develop new materials that will be useful for batteries and more efficient solar cells.[8] It is to be available to the general scientific community.[9]

Architecture

Aurora will have over nine thousand nodes, with each node being composed of two Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids[10] processors, six Xe GPU's and a unified memory architecture which will make a single node have a maximum computing power of 130 teraFLOPS.[11] It will have around 10 petabytes of memory, 230 PB of storage and it will consume ≤60 MW.

See also

References
  1. Zarley, B. David (March 18, 2019). "America's first exascale supercomputer to be built by 2021". The Verge.
  2. Malhotra, Vanshika (March 19, 2019). "'Aurora' Will Be The First Exascale Supercomputer Of America".
  3. Smith, Ryan. "El Capitan Supercomputer Detailed: AMD CPUs & GPUs To Drive 2 Exaflops of Compute". anandtech.
  4. "Intel and Cray are building a $500 million 'exascale' supercomputer for Argonne National Lab".
  5. Burt, Jeff. "Intel, Cray Awarded $200 Million to Build Powerful Supercomputer". eWEEK.
  6. Black, Doug. "DOE Under Secretary for Science Dabbar's Exascale Update: Frontier to Be First, Aurora to Be Monitored". insideHPC.
  7. Johnson, Rob. "Aurora Supercomputer to Assist in the Fight Against Cancer". TECHNOLOGY NETWORKS.
  8. "Energy Department to spend 200 million on new aurora supercomputer". NBC News.
  9. "Aurora, Argonne supercomputer will be the most powerful in the U.S., will be installed at Argonne National Laboratory in the Chicago area".
  10. Papka, Michael (December 8, 2020), IEEE Chicago and ACM Chicago webinar: Supercomputing and ALCF - Dec 7 2020, retrieved December 9, 2020
  11. "Intel's 2021 Exascale Vision in Aurora". anandtech.
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