Rapid increase in performance: USA plans supercomputers with 100 exaflops
The US Department of Energy is planning the next two supercomputer generations. By 2030, the systems should be at least 64 times faster.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) encourages manufacturers to model next-generation supercomputers. In two time windows, each about four years apart, the available computing power of so-called exascale systems is to increase exponentially.
As a first step, the DOE wants a supercomputer that can handle 10 to 20 exaflops by 2026. This corresponds to up to 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second with double (FP64) precision. For comparison: Frontier is currently the fastest supercomputer in the Top500 list with a continuous computing power of 1.1 exaflops and peak values of almost 1.7 exaflops in the common Linpack benchmark. For AI calculations, for example in the Bfloat16 or FP16 data formats, the new system should be 8 to 16 times faster, i.e. it should be able to do 320 trillion calculations per second in the best case.
The second step is an increase to at least 100 FP64 exaflops from 2030. AI formats could then move into the zettaflops realm with more than a trillion calculations per second. The DOE outlines the project in a request for information, which is aimed at all possible manufacturers – from CPU and GPU designers such as AMD, Intel and Nvidia, to system integrators such as HPE, Lenovo and Dell, to software developers.
Up to 60 megawatts of power loss
The supercomputers are supposed to get by with an electrical power consumption of 20 to 60 megawatts – nowadays 30 MW is a common goal. The DOE would like detailed information on how manufacturers intend to improve the efficiency of their hardware in the coming years in order to meet the framework conditions. These include improvements in the manufacturing process and new packaging technologies such as chip stacking.
In addition, the ministry is considering making future supercomputers more modular in order to no longer replace them completely in cycles of 4 to 5 years, but to replace individual parts every 1 to 2 years.
The computing power is said to “revolutionize fields of science such as power generation, materials design, chemistry, precision medicine, advanced manufacturing, inventory management and national security”. Nuclear weapons research is also part of national security. National research institutions such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory operate the US supercomputers.
