Skip to main content

The U.S. government plans to drop $500M on a ridiculously powerful supercomputer

The United States government has announced plans to build Aurora, a blisteringly fast “exascale” supercomputer by 2021 — an effort to boost research projects related to public health issues and environmental science.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) formally announced its plans for the $500-million exascale supercomputer project on March 18. Once built, the Aurora supercomputer  is expected to offer a combination of “high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at exascale.”

Recommended Videos

In context, the word “exascale” refers to the fact that the Aurora supercomputer will be designed to perform at least one exaFLOP, which, according to the DOE, “is equal to one quintillion floating point computations per second.” This level of performance is expected to allow researchers “to address scientific problems at exascale” and promote the development of “new scientific innovations.”

While Aurora will be the first supercomputer in the U.S. to perform at one exaFLOP, it may not be the first exascale supercomputer in the world. As China’s state-controlled Xinhua notes, China’s version of an exascale supercomputer may come out even sooner, in 2020.

The Aurora supercomputer’s projected capabilities and impact were further addressed by U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry in a statement on the upcoming project:

“Achieving exascale is imperative not only to better the scientific community, but also to better the lives of everyday Americans … Aurora and the next generation of exascale supercomputers will apply [high-performance computing] and A.I. technologies to areas such as cancer research, climate modeling, and veterans’ health treatments. The innovative advancements that will be made with exascale will have an incredibly significant impact on our society.”

The Aurora supercomputer project will be built by Intel and subcontractor Cray, Inc. and will be located in Chicago at the Argonne National Laboratory.

Very few details about the actual technologies involved in building  Aurora have been released. That said, Intel is expected to build Aurora using a future generation of its Xeon Scalable processor, a future generation of its Optane DC Persistent Memory, and its Xe architecture and One API software. All these technologies will have to be specifically designed for Aurora’s unique combination of AI and exascale computing.

Anita George
Anita George has been writing for Digital Trends' Computing section since 2018. So for almost six years, Anita has written…
Gamers are finally flocking to Windows 11 after 3 years
Spider-man running on the Asus ROG PG42UQG.

Windows 11 is getting a lot more popular lately. In the latest Steam hardware survey, Valve clocked that 51.97% of its user base is now using Windows 11, which is a 4.28% increase compared to last month and the highest share the operating system has ever seen, despite being readily available for over three years.

Windows 10, the second-most popular operating system on Steam, fell by 2.71%, and now makes up 45.95% of the users Valve surveyed. Just a couple of months ago, when Valve released its August survey results, Windows 11 overtook Windows 10 for the first time in the hardware survey. The gap is only widening now, with the share lost by Windows 10 going almost directly to Windows 11. Earlier this year, Windows 11 adoption was actually down on the Steam hardware survey, with some claiming that Windows 10 offered better gaming performance.

Read more
Best Lenovo laptop deals: Save on Yoga and ThinkPad laptops
Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 front angled view showing display and keyboard deck.

Lenovo laptops are always among the best laptop deals available, and right now that’s the case whether you’re in the market for one of Lenovo’s best laptops or something more entry-level. Despite its regular ranking among the best laptop brands, Lenovo has a lot of laptops from its lineup seeing discounts today. We’ve gone through them all and pieced together the best Lenovo laptop deals for your shopping convenience. Reading onward you’ll find Lenovo laptop deals from its IdeaPad and Yoga lineups, some Lenovo ThinkPad deals, and plenty more to shop. And if you aren’t finding what you’re looking for among Lenovo’s offerings be sure to check out all of the Dell laptop deals, HP laptop deals, and MacBook deals going on today.
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook — $259 $329 21% off

Shopping the best Chromebooks can be a great way to save some money if you only need the bare essentials in a laptop. The IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook has, for the most part, entry-level specs, but it’s able to get the job done when it comes to homework, browsing the web, and even some office work. The 14-inch screen comes in at Full HD resolution so you can do some binge watching with this Chromebook. It’s an all-around great choice for students and professionals who don’t depend on high end software to do their work.

Read more
AMD buying Intel? It’s on the table
A tray of Intel Core Ultra CPUs.

We think of AMD and Intel as exactly what they are -- fierce rivals. However, the U.S. government is encouraging Intel to consider a merger with a rival, such as AMD, to counteract the intense financial trouble the company has been in over the past several months, according to a report from Semafor.

Intel just released its earnings for the third quarter of the year, where the company revealed that it had lost $16.6 billion. Year-over-year, Intel's net profit margin has dropped by 6,064.76%. That's not a typo. Intel is bleeding money, and according to the report, the U.S. government sees the chipmaker as too important to go under. At the moment, Semafor reports that talks between the government and Intel are "purely precautionary," but multiple options to recover the brand are on the table.

Read more