Procurement of next generation supercomputer gets under way
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Computation systems and software environment at ASC.
The National Nuclear Security Administration has approved the next step in the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program’s acquisition of the next generation supercomputer, named Sequoia.
Gen. Bob Smolen, deputy NNSA administrator, signed off on critical decision 1 (CD1) late last week.
Sequoia will be the Laboratory’s first petaFLOP/s (a quadrillion floating operations per second) high-performance computing system and will be housed in the Terascale Simulation Facility (Bldg. 453). Critical Decision 1 allows the Lab’s ASC program to request bid proposals from industry to procure the new system. Selection of a vendor could come as soon as early summer.
Delivery of the first part of the system, dubbed "Dawn," is expected in late 2008 or early 2009. Dawn is initially expected to clock in at about 500 teraFLOP/s, or half a petaFLOP, with the full Sequoia system expected to clock in around 14-20 petaFLOP/s peak by late 2011. The system will serve the ASC and stockpile stewardship programs at the three NNSA weapons laboratories: Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia national labs.
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