HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Pushing the Limits

ORNL's Intel Paragon machine was the fastest supercomputer in the world in 1995.

For 50 years ORNL has been a leader in advancing supercom-puting. In 1954 an ORNL group led by Alston Householder partnered with Argonne National Laboratory to create a computer with the fastest speed and largest data storage capacity of any computer in the world. Called the Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine (ORACLE), this machine helped scientists solve problems in nuclear physics, radiation effects, and the development of shielding for the ill-fated nuclear aircraft project.

In the 1980s ORNL researchers made computational breakthroughs using a new "parallel computer," which harnessed several thousand processors working together to solve scientific problems. In 1995 ORNL obtained the Intel Paragon XP/S 150, a parallel supercomputer linking 3000 processors that was the fastest in the world at the time. It helped scientists predict climate change and develop groundwater movement models. Five years later, ORNL became the first Department of Energy laboratory to have a one-teraflop computerthat is, a machine capable of a trillion calculations per second. ORNL continued its progress with the purchase of an IBM system dubbed "Cheetah," the 8^th fastest computer in the world at the time and now the 16^th fastest machine.

In 2002 ORNL established an ultrahigh-speed, real-time connection that enables the research community to tap super-computing resources previously unavailable for general use. This feat was accomplished by bridging the gap between DOE's Esnet and Internet2.

Also in 2002 ORNL and Cray forged a partnership under the guidance of DOE and with the cooperation of other national labs. This collaboration is expected to result in supercomputers that will exceed the capabilities of Japan's 40-teraflop Earth Simulator, currently the world's fastest computer. The partnership, which will provide resources enabling unprecedented solutions to scientific problems, will advance ORNL to the forefront in supercomputing for the new millennium.

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