Frontier: World’s Fastest Supercomputer
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
The launch of the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory marked a significant milestone in the evolution of high-performance computing, ushering in the era of exascale computing. With a theoretical peak performance of 1.5 exaflops, equal to over a quintillion calculations per second, Frontier takes computational power to unprecedented levels.
Comprehending the immense capabilities of Frontier helps to contrast its specs against everyday computing devices. A typical consumer laptop may have between 16 to 24 central processing units (CPUs), and Frontier has approximately 50,000. Even the most powerful laptop requires around 65-80 watts of electricity while operating Frontier demands a staggering 20 megawatts – enough to power over 15,000 homes.
The $600 million price tag for Frontier also reveals how seriously world governments are betting on supercomputing for scientific research and national security interests. Most personal laptops cost between $500 to $2,000. But for the US Department of Energy, which oversees operations at Oak Ridge, Frontier represents a justifiable expense given how researchers can utilize its muscle for modelling everything from disease outbreaks to climate change at unrivalled resolutions.
In many ways, Frontier builds on its predecessor, Summit, formerly the world’s most powerful supercomputer. But while Summit topped out at 200 petaflops, Frontier leverages next-generation AMD processors and mixed precision architecture to reach 1.5 exaflops. If Summit was already an F1 racecar, Frontier more closely resembles a spaceship in terms of velocity.
Scientists from a wide range of domains have already lined up to tap into Frontier’s capabilities. Teams of researchers will rely on Frontier for projects spanning nuclear/particle physics, computational chemistry, data analytics, and precision medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, Summit proved indispensable for quickly screening potential drug compounds and simulating viral mutations – Frontier promises even faster and more far-reaching insights.
The launch of Frontier signals the start of the exascale era, with more exaflop-class systems slated to come online over the next few years. In 2023, the EuroHPC JU will stand up its 1.5 exaflop supercomputer LUMI in Kajaani, Finland, followed by another system in Bologna, Italy. 2024 should also see new exascale entrants from Argonne National Laboratory and additional European deployments.
As with most leading-edge computing platforms, Frontier serves a secondary purpose as an experimental testbed. Beyond using its prodigious capabilities for advanced simulations, Frontier’s mission involves trialling hardware, system architectures, and software tools to reach more commercially available high-performance computing clusters. Like all supercomputers, Frontier will one day have faster successors, but what researchers learn from
pushing its limits will drive innovations in the broader tech industry.
When imagining what a computer is thousands of times more powerful than a laptop can accomplish, it pays to think creatively. Sure, Frontier can flawlessly model the root dynamics of Earth’s changing climate down to the square mile. But researchers can also harness its prowess for machine learning projects, like predicting how seemingly innocuous genetic mutations might spur disease or parsing video feeds to prevent poaching of endangered wildlife. The computational power of this scale opens doors to discoveries not even conceivable with petascale systems.
Of course, realizing Frontier’s full potential depends entirely on human ingenuity. Hardware specs only tell part of the story – specialized algorithms, models and applications unlock its possibilities. Thankfully, Oak Ridge National Lab has assembled a veritable brain trust of gifted scientists ready to maximize Frontier’s capabilities.
So while most people will never access a supercomputer on the scale of Frontier, its ripple effects over the coming years promise to touch our lives in myriad ways. As the first exascale system deployed in the United States, Frontier sits squarely at the leading edge of computational innovation - where it propels scientific discovery into uncharted territory that may transform the future
Comprehending the immense capabilities of Frontier helps to contrast its specs against everyday computing devices. A typical consumer laptop may have between 16 to 24 central processing units (CPUs), and Frontier has approximately 50,000. Even the most powerful laptop requires around 65-80 watts of electricity while operating Frontier demands a staggering 20 megawatts – enough to power over 15,000 homes.
The $600 million price tag for Frontier also reveals how seriously world governments are betting on supercomputing for scientific research and national security interests. Most personal laptops cost between $500 to $2,000. But for the US Department of Energy, which oversees operations at Oak Ridge, Frontier represents a justifiable expense given how researchers can utilize its muscle for modelling everything from disease outbreaks to climate change at unrivalled resolutions.
In many ways, Frontier builds on its predecessor, Summit, formerly the world’s most powerful supercomputer. But while Summit topped out at 200 petaflops, Frontier leverages next-generation AMD processors and mixed precision architecture to reach 1.5 exaflops. If Summit was already an F1 racecar, Frontier more closely resembles a spaceship in terms of velocity.
Scientists from a wide range of domains have already lined up to tap into Frontier’s capabilities. Teams of researchers will rely on Frontier for projects spanning nuclear/particle physics, computational chemistry, data analytics, and precision medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, Summit proved indispensable for quickly screening potential drug compounds and simulating viral mutations – Frontier promises even faster and more far-reaching insights.
The launch of Frontier signals the start of the exascale era, with more exaflop-class systems slated to come online over the next few years. In 2023, the EuroHPC JU will stand up its 1.5 exaflop supercomputer LUMI in Kajaani, Finland, followed by another system in Bologna, Italy. 2024 should also see new exascale entrants from Argonne National Laboratory and additional European deployments.
As with most leading-edge computing platforms, Frontier serves a secondary purpose as an experimental testbed. Beyond using its prodigious capabilities for advanced simulations, Frontier’s mission involves trialling hardware, system architectures, and software tools to reach more commercially available high-performance computing clusters. Like all supercomputers, Frontier will one day have faster successors, but what researchers learn from pushing its limits will drive innovations in the broader tech industry.
When imagining what a computer is thousands of times more powerful than a laptop can accomplish, it pays to think creatively. Sure, Frontier can flawlessly model the root dynamics of Earth’s changing climate down to the square mile. But researchers can also harness its prowess for machine learning projects, like predicting how seemingly innocuous genetic mutations might spur disease or parsing video feeds to prevent poaching of endangered wildlife. The computational power of this scale opens doors to discoveries not even conceivable with petascale systems.
Of course, realizing Frontier’s full potential depends entirely on human ingenuity. Hardware specs only tell part of the story – specialized algorithms, models and applications unlock its possibilities. Thankfully, Oak Ridge National Lab has assembled a veritable brain trust of gifted scientists ready to maximize Frontier’s capabilities.
So while most people will never access a supercomputer on the scale of Frontier, its ripple effects over the coming years promise to touch our lives in myriad ways. As the first exascale system deployed in the United States, Frontier sits squarely at the leading edge of computational innovation - where it propels scientific discovery into uncharted territory that may transform the future
It makes me wonder what they will be doing with all this information gathered and calculated? 🤔