The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility is charged with helping researchers solve some of the world’s most challenging scientific problems with a combination of world-class high-performance computing (HPC) resources and world-class expertise in scientific computing.
As a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, the OLCF offers leadership-class computing resources to researchers from government, academia, and industry who have many of the largest computing problems in science. Every year, researchers use OLCF resources to achieve breakthroughs ranging from understanding the smallest building blocks of matter to how supernovae spread elements across the universe. The OLCF supports research in biology, chemistry, seismology, engineering, energy, and many other fields. OLCF simulations have improved the safety and performance of nuclear power plants, turbomachinery, and aircraft; accelerated development of new drugs and advanced materials; and informed design of an international fusion reactor. The simulations have explored hurricanes, biofuels, neurodegenerative diseases, and clean combustion for power and propulsion. Research challenges remain, and OLCF resources can help.
Supported by DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, The OLCF—along with its partner organization, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility—offers researchers computing and data analysis resources many times more powerful than they could access elsewhere. Researchers can apply for time at leadership computing facilities through several allocation programs that cater to a range of scientific disciplines and HPC experience levels. Every year, the OLCF hosts and works with several hundred users across a broad range of scientific domains at industry events, on-site meetings, and regular hackathons.
The OLCF’s flagship supercomputer, the IBM AC922 Summit, is supported by world-class data management and analysis tools. The center retired the long-running Cray XK7 Titan system in August 2019. The next chapter in the OLCF’s legacy is taking shape in the form of Frontier, which is slated to be the OLCF’s first exascale system by 2022.
As supercomputing technology continues to evolve, the OLCF is positioned to remain at the vanguard of high-performance computing on the international stage.
