The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory installed a new supercomputer that can calculate 12 petaflops per second, reportedly reducing the simulation and data processing time from years to days.
AFRL said Monday the Raider supercomputer is a product of the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program, and is also accessible to the U.S. Navy and Army.
The system, which is located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, has 189,000 processors. Its computing speed can condense a five-year research or acquisition timeline into approximately 200 days, according to Kelly Dalton, technical director at AFRL’s DOD Supercomputer Resource Center.
AFRL’s Digital Capabilities Directorate has already ordered the next two supercomputers to be delivered in 2024, as the laboratory and DOD implement a continuous upgrade strategy to stay abreast of the latest technology.
“We’re trying to help the scientists and engineers do the work faster and with higher fidelity so they can produce superior capabilities for the warfighter,” Dalton said. “In terms of AFRL, we are trying to advance the research being done here.”
