United States invests hundreds of millions of euros in new supercomputers

The US Department of Energy is going to spend 425 million dollars, converted about 339 million euros, on, among other things, two supercomputers. They are intended for scientific and military purposes and are intended to be the fastest computers in the world.

The ministry announced on Friday that a large part of the amount, about 325 million dollars, is intended for the development of two supercomputers. The project was launched earlier this year under the name Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Lawrence Livermore, or Coral for short. For the development of the two supercomputers, the ministry is working with IBM, Nvidia and Mellanox.

The intention is that the two computers will be five to seven times faster than existing models in the United States, the ministry said in a statement. The most powerful supercomputer to date in the US is Cray’s Titan, which took over from the IBM Sequoia system two years ago.

According to Reuters, the computing power of the two future supercomputers, the Summit and Sierra, will be 150 and 100 petaflops, respectively. That’s more than the fastest computer in the world to date: the Tianhe-2 in China, which has a computing power of at least 33.9 petaflops. The United States says the computers are necessary to compete in the world economically and militarily.

In addition to the money for the supercomputers, the US government is also investing $100 million in developing scalable computer systems over the next ten years. To this end, the ministry works together with the National Nuclear Security Administration. Titan builder Cray, AMD, IBM, Intel and Nvidia are also participating.