Cray Research press release
The multi-year collaboration with Los Alamos, funded through DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), requires that the Cray Research/Silicon Graphics system provide an aggregate peak performance of more than three teraflops, or three trillion calculations per second.
A second system planned for Los' Alamos Advanced Computing Laboratory (ACL) will provide an additional teraflop of computing power. When integrated, the combined peak performance of the two systems will be more than four teraflops--the fastest system in the world and one that can be programmed in a similar way as standard scientific workstations.
Robert H. Ewald, president of Cray Research and senior vice president of Silicon Graphics, said, "The Cray Research-Silicon Graphics team is proud to be selected for this important work, which is vital to America's national security interests and a milestone in high-performance computing. Without a doubt, these two awards propel our technology to the leading position in the supercomputing industry. We are confident that the synergies of the combined Cray Research and Silicon Graphics companies will set the tone for cultivation of all leading-edge supercomputing technologies of the future."
President Clinton in 1993 committed the United States to a global ban on underground nuclear testing, and on Sept. 24, 1996, he signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at the United Nations. In the absence of underground testing, three-dimensional (3D) modeling and simulation must integrate all the past and future data needed by DOE to ensure the safety and reliability of a reduced U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
This effort, known as Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship, combines non-nuclear physics and high-explosives experiments; research in nuclear physics; advanced materials, chemistry, and engineering; and analysis of past weapons data to understand how weapons age and make it possible to continue to certify the nation's stockpile.
"The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is a giant step toward a safer, more peaceful world. We also need to ensure the safety and reliability of a reduced U.S. nuclear stockpile," said President Clinton. "This agreement will provide the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico with the world's most powerful supercomputer--a computer that will provide a reliable substitute to the underground testing we have worked so hard to ban."
"These computers will ensure our ability to meet our national security obligations, while pushing the frontiers of computer technology that will benefit U.S. science and commerce," said Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary.
ASCI is DOE's 10-year, $1 billion program
whose applications in weapons computing typically require unprecedented
levels of
computing power. The two Cray Research/Silicon Graphics
awards
will advance predictive modeling and simulation, both for nuclear
weapons stewardship and for science and engineering.
Los Alamos Director Sig Hecker said, "Los Alamos is proud to continue its long tradition of helping to define the leading edge of high-performance computing by our major role in the ASCI program. By demonstrating that these computational advances can support a complex technology like nuclear weapons, ASCI can have a similar, crucial impact on simulations of the industrial processes, global climate, biotechnology, and many other fields of science."
While the two supercomputers may be linked for unprecedented power, the computer at the ACL will be used chiefly to support research in combined global ocean/atmosphere models; design of advanced materials; molecular biology; environmental and natural hazards and other critical simulation experiments that can't be perfomed with today's computers.
The two systems will combine commercial off-the-shelf components, including MIPS microprocessors, with innovative technologies from Cray Research/Silicon Graphics' Scalable Systems Group.
"The 3-teraflop system we deliver to the ASCI program is by itself more than 30 times the peak performance of all the Cray supercomputers sold in 1990," said Edward R. McCracken, president and chief operating officer of Silicon Graphics. "This highlights the continuing need and growth potential for these extremely high-performance supercomputers."
The Cray Research/Silicon Graphics contract requires an initial delivery system, with 256 processors, to be installed at Los Alamos by December 1996, and the final system, with 3,072 processors, by December 1998. The ACL's one-teraflop system is to be delivered ACL by September 1999.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a leading supplier of high-performance interactive computing systems. The company offers the broadest range of products in the industry--from low-end desktop workstations to servers and high-end Cray supercomputers. Silicon Graphics also markets MIPS microprocessor designs, Alias|Wavefront entertainment and design software, and other software products.
The company's key markets include manufacturing, government, science and industries, telecommunications and entertainment sectors. Silicon Graphics and its subsidiaries have offices throughout the world and headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The combined peak performance of the two SGI/CRI systems will be more than four teraflops.
"We need to
ensure the safety
and reliability
of a reduced
U.S. nuclear
stockpile."
--President Clinton
