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Tag: Supercomputer

  • HPE Wins Contract to Build Supercomputer For NCAR

    HPE Wins Contract to Build Supercomputer For NCAR

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has won a $35+ million contract to build one of the fastest supercomputers for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

    NCAR is US “federally funded R&D center focused on advancing knowledge of geosciences, including meteorology, climate change, and solar activity.” The organization’s work is more important than ever as the threat from climate change continues to increase.

    The new system will be housed at NCAR’s Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne. The system will be a major upgrade over the existing one, providing almost 3.5X faster speed. The supercomputer will go operational in 2022 and help NCAR create digital models of various weather effects to better understand them.

    “This new system, powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is a major step forward in supercomputing power, providing the scientific community with the most cutting-edge technology to better understand the Earth system,” said Anke Kamrath, director, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory at the National Center of Atmospheric Research. “The resulting research will lead to new insights into potential threats ranging from severe weather and solar storms to climate change, helping to advance the knowledge needed for improved predictions that will strengthen society’s resilience to potential disasters.”

  • Watson-Powered Toy Uses IBM Supercomputer to Develop Relationship with Your Kid

    We’ve come a long way from Barbie.

    If you’re looking for an interactive toy that can talk with your kid, tell knock-knock jokes, and help them learn by getting to know their specific needs – there’s a Kickstarter campaign for you. It’s called CogniToys, and it’s a super-smart toy dinosaur with its own personality.

    “Each toy will get to know the child and grow with him/her, interacting directly with them to create an experience around each child’s personal interests. The toy will explore favorite colors, favorite toys, interests and use these to customize engagement. Even better, the toy has a personality of its own that changes over time,” says its makers, Elemental Path.

    The CogniToys dino will let kids “ask thousands of questions and receive age-appropriate answers, give commands to the toy allowing the child to discover hidden talents, and hear a number of stories and even create their own stories.”

    So, how does it do this? With the help of IBM’s supercomputer, Watson. You may remember it as the one kicking all the ass on Jeopardy a while back.

    Elemental Path recently won the grand prize in IBM’s Watson Mobile App Developer Challenge, which granted the company access to the supercomputer and all its knowledge. The company quickly moved into the pre-production/prototype phase, and are now fielding donations via Kickstarter to help get the toy’s production into full swing.

    And they’re doing pretty well. In fewer than three days, the project has already doubled its $50,000 goal and is approaching 1,000 individual backers.

    You can back the Kickstarter right now and a $99 pledge gets you a CogniToy Dino. Elemental Path says it’s going to make additional colors of its product with the extra money it receives. Although, with the current rate of pledges holding, the company is going to have to make up some new stretch goals.

    Image via CogniToys, Kickstarter

  • China Supercomputer: Tianhe-2 Claims Fastest Computer Title

    A Chinese supercomputer – the Tianhe-2 – has leapt to the top of the latest Top 500 List, which tracks the fastest supercomputers in the world.

    The Tianhe-2 (or “Milky Way-2”), which became fully operational two years ahead of schedule, clocks in at an astounding 33.86 petaflops per second. A petaflop is one trillion calculations. The Tianhe-2 is over 20 billion times as fast as the first supercomputer ever built, the CDC 6600, which was created in 1964

    Tianhe-2 is nearly twice as fast as the Titan, a Cray XK7 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennesee. The Titan, which has enjoyed the top spot on the list for some time, now moves into second place. The third place computer, dubbed Sequoia, is installed in at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and runs at 17.17 petaflops per second. In fourth place is Fujitsu’s K Computer, which runs at 10.59 petaflops per second and can be found at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan.

    The Tianhe-2 has 3.12 million processor cores. It was designed and built by the National University of Defense Technology, which is run by the Chinese government. Now that it is online, the computer is reportedly bound for the National Supercomputer Center, which is in Guangzhou in the Guandong province.

    The Top 500 list is, as the name suggests, a list of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers on the planet. The list is compiled twice a year by Professor Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim in Germany, Professor Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennesee, Knoxville, and Erich Stromaier and Horst Simon of the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory.

    As with previous lists, the United States dominates the field in terms of the sheer number of systems. There are 252 American supercomputers on the list, up from 250 on the previous list. China has 66 systems on the list (down from 72), and Japan has 30 (down from 32). The UK has 29 systems on the list, France has 23, and Germany has 19. The remaining 81 systems are scattered in countries throughout Europe and Asia.

  • Cancer Treatment Gets A Boost From Genomic Supercomputing

    Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, Chairman of NantHealth and the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health, as well as the most wealthy American in Los Angeles according to Forbes, this week announced the launch of the fastest genomic supercomputing platform in the U.S.

    Soon-Shiong states that the technology will reduce the time needed for cancer genome analysis from eight weeks to only 47 seconds. It will allow oncologists to compare treatment options with regard to genetics, risk, and cost before treatment even begins.

    At an event on Tuesday hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center and Doctors Helping Doctors, Soon-Shiong revealed the successful real-time analysis of the largest collection of tumor genomes in the U.S. 6,017 cancer genomes from 3,022 patients with 19 different types of cancer were analyzed in the record time of 69 hours.

    NantHealth, the company that developed the technology, stated that genomic analysis, until now, took an average of 8 to 10 weeks. In that time, doctors would have to choose a course of treatment without knowing the results, sometimes leading to incorrect treatment.

    “Incorrect care that leads to a loss of life is unacceptable,” said Soon-Shiong. “And from today onward, it will no longer be necessary. Doctors will finally be able to provide higher-quality treatment in a dramatically more efficient, effective, and affordable manner.”

    NantHealth and the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health partnered with Blue Shield of California, the National LambdaRail, Doctors Helping Doctors, Verizon, Bank of America, AT&T, Intel, and HP to build a supercomputer-based high-speed fiber network that will provide oncologists with genomic analysis in seconds. NantHealth stated that the advance will allow doctors to treat patients based on the DNA of cancer, rather than just its anatomical location.

    NantHealth reported that its partner oncologists who are using its software platform, called Eviti, have seen incorrect recommendations by doctors drop from 32% to “virtually zero.”

    “We can’t reduce the cost of care and improve outcomes in cancer if we don’t have the capability to know the right treatment for the right patient before treatment begins,” said Soon-Shiong. “We needed a national supercomputing infrastructure that brings genomic medicine into clinical practice. By placing supercomputers in the hands of physicians, that need is now a reality.”

  • New Supercomputer Champion Crowned

    New Supercomputer Champion Crowned

    The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced today that it now has the world’s most powerful computing system. Dubbed “Sequoia,” the computer clocked in at 16.32 sustained petaflops, earning it the top spot on the International Supercomputing Conference’s top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. One petaflop represents a quadrillion floating point operations per second.

    Sequoia was developed by IBM and resides at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The system is a 96-rack Blue Gene/Q system that will be used for simulation research. Specifically, Sequoia will be used for the NNSA’s nuclear stockpile simulations.

    “Computing platforms like Sequoia help the United States keep its nuclear stockpile safe, secure and effective without the need for underground testing,” said Thomas D’Agostino, NNSA Administrator. “While Sequoia may be the fastest, the underlying computing capabilities it provides give us increased confidence in the nation’s nuclear deterrent as the weapons stockpile changes under treaty agreements, a critical part of President Obama’s nuclear security agenda. Sequoia also represents continued American leadership in high performance computing, key to the technology innovation that drives high-quality jobs and economic prosperity.”

    The NNSA’s supercomputer simulation program is a stand-in for real-life nuclear testing. Sequoia will allow the NNSA to complete nuclear stockpile studies and the stockpile’s annual assessment in less time. It can also help simulate and anticipate future problems that might result from the aging stockpile.

    “Sequoia is an exciting achievement for the POWER architecture, not just for its speed and energy efficiency, but also for the important and complex work it can support to safeguard the nation’s nuclear stockpile,” said Colin Parris, general manager IBM Power Systems. “With supercomputers capable of 16 sustained petaflops, our ability to affect strategic change in areas like life sciences, public safety, energy and transportation that make our world smarter is greater than ever. The improvements in affordability, performance, efficiency and size that Sequoia delivers will also enable a broader set of commercial customers to implement HPC for their competitive advantage.”

    (Pictured above from left to right in front of Sequoia: Bruce Goodwin, principal associate director for WCI, Dona Crawford, associate director for Computation, Michael Browne, IBM, Kim Cupps, leader of the Livermore Computing Division, and Michel McCoy, head of LLNL’s Advanced Simulation and Computing program and deputy director for Computation.)