Communications of the ACM
Early Science Runs Prepare Lawrence Livermore National Lab's Sequoia For National Security Missions
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Sequoia supercomputer is a 16.32 petaflops IBM machine built from 96 racks containing 98,304 computing nodes and 1.6 million cores.
Credit: NNSA
Researchers from the three nuclear weapons laboratories of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) are running unclassified science codes on the Sequoia supercomputer to test the power and versatility of the 20-petaflop peak IBM BlueGene/Q system.
Sequoia is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) TSF computing facility, and the lab's researchers are exploring science such as high energy density plasmas and the electronic structure of heavy metals. The shakeout will enable Livermore researchers and IBM computer scientists to work out bugs and optimize the machine before it is transitioned in March 2013 to classified work relevant to NNSA's national security mission.
"The early science runs are critical to the success of classified work to which the machine will be dedicated early next year," says Michel McCoy, who leads LLNL's Advanced Simulation and Computing program. "These codes represent the first big test of the machine and allow us to explore Sequoia's range and parameters."
From Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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