FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:September 7, 1995
NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS:
Rick Oborn, 202/586-4940
Jon Ventura, 202/586-0838
Energy Department Set to Build World's Most Powerful Computer
Nuclear test simulations replace explosions
The Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a $45-million joint development contract with its Sandia National Laboratories and Intel Corp. to build the world's most powerful computer by the end of 1996.
"This agreement marks the advent of a new era in high performance computing that will significantly benefit our national security," said Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary. "Computers of this scale will unlock the ability to confidently simulate nuclear weapons tests in the laboratory. This effort demonstrates a step forward for our scientific-based stockpile stewardship program. It emphasizes the Department's commitment to maintain the President's goal of preserving a safe, secure and reliable nuclear deterrent without underground testing."
The computer, 10 times more powerful than the fastest machines today, will be run by DOE's three nuclear weapons laboratories, Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory . It will be used to simulate the reliability and performance of nuclear weapons, predict the effects of long term aging, and to model manufacturing process. The effort is part of the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), a new program designed to use high performance computation to assure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the absence of underground nuclear tests.
The "teraflops" computer advances computing to a significantly higher performance level. Tera means trillions, and flops is floating point operations per second. So, teraflops is a trillion floating point operations per second. Peak performance of the new computer will be about 1.8 teraflops. Today's most powerful computers are measured in gigaflops (billions).
Although part of the Department's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), a wide range of other applications are possible. "This project addresses a vital national security mission -- confidence in the nuclear stockpile," said Deputy Secretary Charles Curtis. "However, high performance computing can be applied to many other DOE missions. This technology can be used to develop safer and more efficient automobiles, create a better understanding of global climate change, or track pollutants in the environment."
The selection of Intel Corp. was accomplished through a competitive procurement which was administered by Sandia National Laboratory and is the first in a series of similar procurements intended to support the ASCI program. The computer will be located at Sandia and linked to Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore through DOE's high-speed digital communications system, the Energy Sciences Network.
--DOE--
R-95-130
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