Exascale Supercomputers from 2020-2023
In 2021, the $500-million Aurora could become the first exascale supercomputer.
Aurora should have twice the peak performance of the current supercomputer record holder which is the Fugaku at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan.
After Aurora, the DOE plans to bring online a $600-million machine named Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in TN in late 2021.
A third supercomputer, El Capitan, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in CA, two years later.
El Capitan will have a peak performance of more than 1.5 exaflops (1.5 quintillion calculations per second) and an anticipated delivery in late 2022. The total contract award is valued at $600 million.
Featuring advanced capabilities for modeling, simulation and artificial intelligence (AI), based on Cray’s new Shasta architecture, El Capitan is projected to run national nuclear security applications at more than 50 times the speed of LLNL’s Sequoia system. Depending on the application, El Capitan will run roughly 10 times faster on average than LLNL’s Sierra system, currently the world’s second most powerful supercomputer at 125 petaflops of peak performance. Projected to be at least four times more energy efficient than Sierra, El Capitan is expected to go into production by late 2023, servicing the needs of NNSA’s Tri-Laboratory community: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
The European Union has a range of exascale programs in the works under its European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking.
Japan is aiming for the exascale version of Fugaku to be available to users within a couple years.
China has three exascale projects. The plan is for the Tianhe-3 exaflop supercomputer to be completed in 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has pushed back timelines.
SOURCES – PNAS – Core Concept: Nascent exascale supercomputers offer promise, present challenges
