US Eyes Supercomputers 10X Faster Than Current Exascale Machines
Last month, the US retook the supercomputing crown with Frontier, the world’s first publicly confirmed exascale machine. Now the country is interested in creating a supercomputer meant to be up to 10 times faster.
On Tuesday, the US Department of Energy issued(Opens in a new window) a “request for information” to the computing industry on building next-generation supercomputers for the 2025 to 2030 timeframe.
“DOE is interested in the deployment of one or more supercomputers that can solve scientific problems 5 to 10 times faster—or solve more complex problems, such as those with more physics or requirements for higher fidelity—than the current state-of-the-art systems,” the agency wrote.
In addition to Frontier, the US is preparing two other exascale machines called Aurora and El Capitan, which are scheduled to launch in the coming months. The machines will help the US compete in the supercomputing race against China. But for the remainder of the decade, the Department of Energy is already trying to lay some groundwork for exascale systems capable of surpassing them.
The request for information calls for developing exascale machines that will maintain a power envelope of 20 to 60 Megawatts, despite the drastic increase in computing power. For perspective, the Frontier machine currently operates at 21 Megawatts.
The other priority involves looking at building “modular” supercomputers, which can be upgraded with new parts over time. “We also wish to explore the development of an approach that moves away from monolithic acquisitions toward a model for enabling more rapid upgrade cycles of deployed systems, to enable faster innovation on hardware and software,” the DOE wrote.
This would open the door to upgrading the
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