AMD receives large exascale contract from US government

AMD has landed a major deal with the US government. AMD will receive a total of $12.6 million under the FastForward program for research into exascale computing.

AMD has been struggling with disappointing sales and missed revenue figures lately, but the company can also report positive news this week. The science arm of the US Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration have awarded AMD a major contract with the FastForward program, according to Reuters. This is a research project that aims to accelerate the development of exascale computing.

The Department of Energy has pledged AMD $9.6 million for processor research and an additional $3 million for memory research. The term “exascale computing” refers to the computing power of future supercomputers at the exaflops level. Currently, supercomputers are at the level of petaflops. For example, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the IBM Sequoia in the Lawrence Livermore lab, has a capacity of 16.32 petaflops. One exaflop is a thousand petaflops and this barrier is expected to be broken in 2018.

AMD warned Tuesday that its quarterly revenue is likely to fall by 11 percent due to disappointing sales in China and Europe.