The American Defense world is rich in research institutes, among these, of primary importance, we can mention the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Federal Research Institute located in Livermore, California.
The main task of this Institute consists in research and development in the field of science and technology applied to Homeland Security, guaranteeing the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons of the American nation by means of advanced sciences, engineering and technologies. It also deals with other issues related to US capabilities in the energy, environmental and economic competitiveness fields.
The laboratories employ 5.800 people around and can count on an annual budget of 1,5 billions of dollars, here are some figures that make us understand the importance of the research institute.
These days it was announced the acquisition of a new "weapon" in the arsenal of the Institute: the Super Computer Sierra, created by the collaboration of IBM and Nvidia Tesla. The scientists of the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program will use it primarily to measure the performance of American nuclear weapons but also for the global challenges facing America. These include the non-proliferation of armaments and "counter terrorism", in practice they are analyzes and forecasts based on the control of large amounts of data, with the help, probably, of Artificial Intelligence.
The new Super computer Sierra joins those already in service: Sequoia, Catalyst e Vulcan.
Some data to understand what the Super Computer Sierra consists of:
- Processor architecture: IBM and NVIDIA Volta;
- Parallel computing capacity;
- Clock Speed: 3.1 GHz;
- Number of Computational Nodes: 4.320;
- Core by node: 44;
- Total number of cores: 190.080;
- Memory per Node: 256 GB for CPU and 64 GB for GPU;
- Total memory: 1.36 Peta Byte.
- Power: around 11 Megawatts.
The Super Computer Sierra appears to be in third place among the super computers existing in the world, at least according to the top500 list, published in June 2018.
The super computer comes first in the list Summit, also IBM (with NVIDIA Tesla), employed by the US Departement Of Energy at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; in second place is the Sunway TaihuLight, in service since 2016, developed by China's Research Center of Parallel Computer Enginering & Technology and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi.
Where is Italy positioned in this sector? It is nice to see the ENI Super Computer in the list, in thirteenth position in the general classification, but in fact in sixth place, after the United States, China, Japan, Switzerland and South Korea, with the Super Computer HPC4 from Hewlett Packard (a company American).
It is also interesting to note that, finally, we are starting to move at European level for the creation of a European IT industry, a sign that the strategic role of the sector has finally been understood. In fact, in October the European Council of Ministers gave its support to the investment plan of the European Commission which provides for the allocation of one billion euros for the construction of a European computing infrastructure.
We therefore await, hoping to see soon the first totally European Super Computer ...
To learn more:
- https://computation.llnl.gov/computers/sierra
- https://hpc.llnl.gov/hardware/platforms/sierra
- https://www.llnl.gov/news/llnl%E2%80%99s-sierra-third-fastest-supercomputer
- https://www.top500.org/lists/2018/06/
- https://www.cineca.it/it/news/la-commissione-europea-investe-1-miliardo-...
