HPC at Argonne

ALCF Continues a Tradition of Computing Innovation

In 1949, because the computers they needed weren’t yet available commercially for purchase, Argonne physicists built their own. It was used to solve enormously complex mathematical problems. Thus began the Argonne tradition of innovation in providing leading computing resources to the scientific community—a tradition that continues today at the ALCF.

The seedbed for such groundbreaking software as MPI, PETSc, PVFS, GridFTP, and Cobalt, and as an essential partner in the development of some of the world’s premier supercomputers, Argonne’s historic stronghold at the forefront of scientific computing is undisputed.

  • 2011
    • Supported 30 INCITE projects and 7 ALCC projects sponsored by the Department of Energy
    • Planned facility enhancements for Mira, the next-generation Blue Gene/Q supercomputer
    • Supported 16 Early Science projects
    • Prepared for Tukey, our visualization system that will be twice as fast as its predecessor, Eureka.
    • Delivered 1.2 billion processor-hours of science
  • 2010
    • Began support of 35 INCITE projects and 10 ALCC projects sponsored by the Department of Energy
    • Signed contract for Mira, the next-generation Blue Gene/Q supercomputer
    • Selected 16 Early Science projects to run on the 10-petaflops Mira
    • Delivered more than 2 billion processor-hours of science
  • 2009
    • Went production of 557 teraflops Blue Gene/P system
    • Began support of 28 INCITE projects
    • Approved for 10 petaflop system to be delivered in 2012 timeframe
    • Began joint Argonne/NERSC Magellan cloud project
    • Delivered 897M core hours of science
  • 2008
    • Increased to 20 INCITE projects
    • Begin support of Early Science and INCITE projects on Blue Gene/P
  • 2007
    • Increased to 9 INCITE projects
    • Continued development projects
    • Held Next Generation Blue Gene workshop (June)
    • Installed 100-teraflops Blue Gene/P (Oct.-Nov.)
    • Accepted 100-teraflops Blue Gene/P (Dec.)
  • 2006
    • Began production support of 6 INCITE projects
    • Continued code development and evaluation
  • 2005
    • Installed 5-teraflops Blue Gene/L for evaluation
  • 2004
    • Formed the Blue Gene Consortium with IBM