The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois has celebrated the collaborative effort behind its new exascale computer, called Aurora, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
ANL said Wednesday Energy Secretary Chris Wright and leaders from Argonne, Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise attended the event.
Wright noted that Aurora gives the U.S. a decisive edge in artificial intelligence, national security and scientific discovery.
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Aurora: Advancing Scientific Discoveries With AI, Simulation
Aurora provides researchers with simulation, AI and data analysis capabilities to accelerate discoveries in cancer research and treatments, aerospace engineering, fusion energy and quantum computing, among other scientific fields.
The national lab collaborated with Intel and HPE to develop the Aurora supercomputer, which is equipped with 63,744 graphics processing units, 84,992 network endpoints and advanced water-cooling infrastructure.
“Aurora’s latest achievement reflects the scale, ambition and deep technical collaboration between Intel, HPE and Argonne National Laboratory,” said Christopher George, president of Intel Government Technologies.
“Powered by Intel’s unified hardware and software architecture, Aurora brings together AI and high performance computing to accelerate scientific discovery. It’s a powerful example of what public-private collaboration can deliver and a foundation for the next generation of systems that will push the boundaries of innovation,” added George, a previous Wash100 awardee.
Housed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, Aurora occupies 10,000 square feet and is interconnected by 300 miles of networking cables.
In January, ANL made the machine available to researchers worldwide to advance scientific discoveries.
