IBM, Intel, AMD, Cray, HPE and NVIDIA Have Been Awarded a Grant for Exaflop Supercomputer Development

The most effective supercomputer is launched in China today. The system, called Sunway TaihuLight, operates locally developed processors. The ultimate Sunway TaihuLight productivity is 125 petaflops. In 2020 China plans to generate the first system in the world with a capacity overcoming one exaflops. At present the USA stays behind, however American supercomputers’ energy performance is significantly higher.

The US Department of Energy has established a $258 million grant for cost effective exaflop supermachines construction. Six American companies (IBM, Intel, AMD, Cray, HPE and NVIDIA) won it. Now they are to create an architecture, able to consume 25–30 MW at one exaflop productiveness. Such a system’s deployment is to take place in 2021. Apart from funds committed, each member company of the Exascale Computing Project program will put up its own means, constituting around 40% of DOE’s funds. Thus, the project cost will increase to $430 mln. In return, developers will have a possibility to utilize the latest solutions for their own commercial purposes. NVIDIA, for instance, is going to use the future architecture in new GPUs, replacing Volta.