FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 1996NEWS MEDIA CONTACT:
Patrick Dorinson/DOE, 202/586-4940
Cheryl Vyfhuis/Silicon Graphics, 415/933-5255
John Melchi/Cray Research , 612/832-5000
Jim Danneskiold/Los Alamos, 505/667-1640
Cray Research-Silicon Graphics Wins DOE Award For World's Most Powerful Supercomputer
The Clinton Administration today announced that Cray Research, the supercomputing subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc., will provide the world's most powerful supercomputer to Los Alamos National Laboratory. The $110.5 million Department of Energy (DOE) award is part of a program to develop a reliable substitute for underground nuclear testing.
The multi-year collaboration with Los Alamos, funded through DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), requires that the final Cray Research-Silicon Graphics system provide an aggregate peak performance of more than three teraflops or three trillion calculations per second. A second system providing an additional teraflop of computing power will be added at the Los Alamos Advanced Computing Laboratory. When integrated, the combined peak performance of the two systems will be more than four teraflops-the fastest system in world.
"The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is a giant step toward a safer, more peaceful world. We also need to ensure the safety and reliability of a reduced U.S. nuclear stockpile," said President Clinton. "This agreement will provide the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico with the world's most powerful super-computer-a computer that will provide a reliable substitute to the underground testing we have worked so hard to ban."
"These computers will ensure our ability to meet our national security obligations, while pushing the frontiers of computer technology that will benefit U.S. science and commerce," said Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary.
Robert H. Ewald, President of Cray Research and Senior Vice President of Silicon Graphics, said, "The Cray Research-Silicon Graphics team is proud to be selected for this important work, which is vital to America's national security interests and a milestone in high-performance computing. Without a doubt, this award propels our technology to the leading position in the supercomputing industry. We are confident that the synergies of the combined Cray Research and Silicon Graphics companies will set the tone for cultivation of all leading-edge supercomputing technologies of the future."
President Clinton in 1993 committed the United States to a global ban on underground nuclear testing, and on September 24th of this year he signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at the United Nations. In the absence of underground testing, three dimensional (3D) modeling and simulation must integrate all the past and future data needed by DOE to ensure the safety and reliability of a reduced U.S. nuclear physics and high-explosives experiments; research in nuclear physics; advanced materials, chemistry and engineering, and analysis of past weapons data to understand how weapons age and make it possible to continue to certify the nation's stockpile.
ASCI is DOE's 10-year, $1 billion program whose applications in weapons computing typically require unprecedented levels computing power. This award will advance predictive modeling and simulation, both for nuclear weapons stewardship and for science and engineering.
Los Alamos Director Sig Hecker said, "Los Alamos is proud to continue its long tradition of helping to define the leading edge of high-performance computing by our major role in the ASCI program. By demonstrating that these computational advances can support a complex technology like nuclear weapons, ASCI can have a similar, crucial impact on simulations of the industrial processes, global climate, biotechnology and many other fields of science."
The system will combine commercial off-the-shelf components, including MIPS' microprocessors, with innovative technologies from Cray Research and Silicon Graphics' Scalable Systems Group. It will accelerate the current trend in the computing market toward clusters of shared-memory programming servers.
"The final system we deliver to the ASCI program (three teraflops) is by itself more than 30 times the peak performance of all the Cray supercomputers sold in 1990," said Edward R. McCracken, chairman and chief executive officer of Silicon Graphics. "This highlights the continuing need and growth potential for these very high performance supercomputers."
The Cray Research-Silicon Graphics contract requires an initial delivery system with 256 processors to be installed at Los Alamos by December 1996 and the final system with 3,072 processors, by December 1998.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a leading suppler of high-performance interactive computing systems. The company offers the broadest range of products in the industry-from low-end desktop work stations to servers and high-end Cray supercomputers. Silicon Graphics also markets MIPS microprocessors designs, Alias/Wavefront entertainment and design software and other software products. The company's key markets include manufacturing, government, science & industries, telecommunications and entertainment sectors. Silicon Graphics and its subsidiaries have offices throughout the world and headquarters in Mountain View, California.
-DOE-
NOTE TO EDITORS: A fact sheet is available with additional details on the Cray Research-Silicon Graphics ASCI system.
R-96-155
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