Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The NNSA Sequoia supercomputer takes worlds fastest title, preventing nuclear testing

Supercomputer for NNSA Sequoia ranked as the fastest in the world
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory supercomputer passes petaflop 16



WASHINGTON, D.C. - the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that a supercomputer called Sequoia at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been ranked the most powerful computer in the world.
The synchronization to 16,32 sustained petaflop (quadrillion floating point operations per second), Sequoia received a standard industry ranking number list Top500 fastest supercomputers in the world published on Monday, June 18, at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC12) in Hamburg, Germany. Sequoia was built for the NNSA by IBM.
IBM Blue Gene/Q 96 system - rack, Sequoia will allow simulations that explore phenomena at a level of detail never possible. Sequoia is dedicated to NNSA Advanced Simulation and computing program (ASC) for the management of the nuclear stockpiles of the nation, a joint effort of LLNL and National Laboratory in Los Alamos, Sandia National Laboratories.
"Calculation of platforms such as Sequoia at the United States help to maintain its nuclear arsenal safe and secure without the need for underground testing," said NNSA administrator Thomas D'Agostino. "Sequoia can be faster, provides underlying computing capabilities give us confidence in nuclear deterrence of the country has increased as weapons accumulate changes under the agreements of the Treaty, an essential part of the nuclear safety of president Obama. program". Sequoia also represents American leader in high performance computer, key technological innovation leading to economic prosperity and quality jobs. »
"Sequoia will allow a more complete understanding of the performance of weapons, including the hydrodynamics and the properties of materials at temperatures and extreme pressure." In particular, the system will enable the result of calculations of quantifying uncertainty highly committed to support efforts to extend the life of aging weapons systems; "what we call a life extension program (LEP)," said Bob Meisner, NNSA Director CSA program.
Quantification of uncertainty, or "UQ," is the quantitative characterization and reduction of uncertainty in the applications of the computer with very large suites of running calculations to characterize the effects of minor differences in systems. Sources of uncertainty are active in natural sciences and engineering. UQ uses statistical methods to determine the probable results.
The machine will be an important tool used to support programs of life, including the B61 and the W78 extension stocks. By reducing the time required for these studies, the total costs are also reduced. In addition, the machine is intended to improve the ability of the NNSA to maintain stock by resolution of the important results in weapons systems, providing greater power for the annual assessment of the reserve and anticipate and prevent future problems resulting from inevitable aging. This helps to ensure that the nation will never return to nuclear explosive tests.
Superordinateurs as Sequoia helped the United States to have confidence in its stockpile of nuclear weapons in the 20 years since the nuclear tests ended in 1992. The idea, which comes from superinformatiques simulations is also essential to address the issues of non-proliferation and the fight against terrorism as well as inform other decisions of national security as nuclear weapon of political and treaty agreements.
"Sequoia is an exciting achievement for the architecture of power, not only for its speed and efficiency, but also for the important and complex work, it can support to protect the nuclear stockpiles of the country," said Colin Parris, Director general IBM Power Systems. "With supercomputers capable of 16 sustained petaflop, our ability to influence strategic areas change as life, public safety and transportation sciences that make our most intelligent world is more than ever." Improvements of affordability, performance, efficiency and size of Sequoia supply will also a broader set of clients to implement the HPC for their competitive advantage. »
The NNSA/LLNL/IBM partnership has produced six systems HPC which were classified among the most powerful computers in the world, including: the accelerated strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) Blue Pacific. ASCI white; the Advanced Simulation and computing (ASC), purple; Blue Gene/L; Blue Gene/P; and Blue Gene/Q, Sequoia. ASCI White, Blue Gene/L and now reaches Sequoia a number of ranking on the Top500 list.
Sequoia is mainly water cooled and consists of 96 records; 98 304 compute nodes; core 1.60 million. and 1.6 petabytes of memory. Although orders of magnitude more powerful than such predecessor systems as purple bag and Blue Gene/L, Sequoia will be about 90 times more power efficient that violet and approximately eight times more that BG/L relative to the speed of these systems.

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