The Laboratory is about to enter a new era of computing performance, recently initiating procurement of a new supercomputer that is planned to provide computational power exceeding any other facility in the world.
"This is a continuation of the long history of cutting-edge computing at Los Alamos," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. "Once again, Los Alamos and the U.S. computing industry will take a very forward-leaning position in New Mexico by attempting to develop the world's fastest supercomputer utilizing the industry's newest technology."
The new Los Alamos computer will be called "Roadrunner," after the fleet-of-foot state bird of New Mexico. It is expected to run scientific calculations of highly complex phenomena that are 10 times as detailed as any existing computer. It also will establish Los Alamos as the leading contender to win the worldwide race to have the first supercomputer able to run at a sustained performance level of 1 petaflop, or a billion million computations per second.
"Roadrunner has the potential to be a catalyst for shifting computational science and engineering across a broad spectrum of projects," said Laboratory Director Bob Kuckuck. "Roadrunner is not simply about more memory and more processors; it is a rare opportunity to stimulate Laboratory scientists to think differently about how to address the highly complex, multi-disciplinary issues that are the norm at Los Alamos."
Laboratory officials have explained that the petaflop project is a high-risk project from a technical standpoint, as it would be the first such use of a still-evolving technology. The project will consist of several phases as part of the development process. Each step is necessary on the road to completion - the petaflop machine. The Laboratory anticipates the project to be fully successful.
The buildout plan for the supercomputer calls for the hardware to be delivered in several phases. The first phase, to be completed in September, is a cluster-based machine that will be delivered using standard technologies, providing badly needed additional computing capacity to the Laboratory.
If a "go" decision is made to pursue the goal of a sustained petaflop, a final phase would be executed, with plans for completion at the end of 2007. This final phase would include the addition of a large number of advanced, state-of-the-art computer chips to the base machine, enabling a dramatic jump in scientific computing capability and a new world-record in supercomputer performance.
While the system will be tasked with a wide variety of basic science and threat reduction related calculations, the primary role of the new capability will be to provide a major advance in maintaining maximum confidence in the reliability of the nation's existing stockpile of nuclear warheads, and enable a more rapid transformation of the country's nuclear weapons complex.
