The U.S. Department of Energy ordered from HPE and the AMD supercomputer for modeling of nuclear weapon. Contract for $600 million

At the beginning of March, 2020 U.S. Department of Energy ordered at HPE and AMD supercomputer for modeling of nuclear weapon. The contract for $600 million was signed.

The supercomputer which received the name El Capitan is designed for the Ministry power engineering specialists USA by the company Cray which HPE purchased for $1.3 billion in 2019. The project is implemented with assistance of Livermore National Laboratory of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The U.S. Department of Energy ordered from HPE and the AMD supercomputer for modeling of nuclear weapon

El Capitan is positioned as the fastest supercomputer in the world — it will provide by 10 times faster data processing, than any of his predecessors. Also it is noted that a system will have performance which is more, than at 200 most powerful supercomputers in the world combined.

AMD Epyc Genoa processors which are constructed on architecture of Zen 4 will become a basis of El Capitan. AMD chips, relevant by March, 2020, use architecture of Zen 2. Each El Capitan node which quantity is not called will include one CPU Epyc Genoa and four graphic processors Radeon Instinct integrated by the interface on the basis of Infinity Architecture of third generation.

This system represents new type of computer architecture and supercomputers of the top class which include very closely connected processors, accelerators and memory — the analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy Patrick Moorhead says, commenting on development of El Capitan for the American Ministry of Energy. — So far AMD is the only company which can make it with high-performance processors and graphic processors therefore the choice of the company is obvious.

Start of El Capitan is planned for 2023. It is supposed that a system will solve the problems connected with nuclear weapon, climate, the analysis of mutations of genes and search of drugs.^[1]

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