July 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

My View

Manuel Vigil: Talent, focus, and a common goal

Photo by LeRoy N. Sanchez

In late May, the Laboratory's Roadrunner supercomputer exceeded a sustained speed of 1 petaflop/s. On June 18, the Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers officially designated the Roadrunner system as the fastest supercomputer in the world.

As Roadrunner Project manager, I have been involved in its development from the very early stages when it was just an idea to the selection of IBM to form a partnership to design and build a new supercomputer that would be the first in the world to run at
1 thousand trillion operations per second.

We've progressed during the last two years to achieve this highly visible milestone, overcoming completely new technical challenges along the way. But much work remains to be done on system installation and acceptance, system integration, and application software development before the benefits from using the Roadrunner system are fully realized. The future holds great promise: initial scientific simulations run on the system indicate that Roadrunner will play a key role in the Laboratory's mission in the near future.

I have been a staff member, group leader, and project manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than 30 years, including my time here as a student. During this period, I have been involved in a number of important scientific and technical projects that have showcased our Laboratory's world-class capabilities in high-performance computing. With Roadrunner, I feel especially proud and fortunate to be part of this team effort. The success of this project is due to a large team of incredibly talented individuals focused on a common goal.

Roadrunner is a great achievement that every Laboratory employee can be proud of, demonstrating both Los Alamos's technical capabilities and ability to successfully execute large-scale projects. This is what our national laboratory is all about.

—Manuel Vigil, Roadrunner project manager, High Performance Computing Division Office