Nine DOE Supercomputers Designed by Penguin Computing Appear in the Top 500 List
November 2018 – Nine supercomputers designed and built by Penguin Computing were ranked in the TOP500 List, as announced at SC18 in Dallas, Texas.
All nine supercomputers are built on the Tundra® Extreme Scale computing platform using Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications. In addition, all nine supercomputers are deployed in U.S. national labs as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Commodity Technology Systems-1 (CTS-1) contract to support the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to ensure nuclear stockpile stewardship in compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, exemplifying how OCP-based technology can give organizations both value and performance.
As part of the DOE’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program, these supercomputers provide simulation-based confidence in the nuclear stockpile, an alternative to explosive test-based confidence. The ASC integrates the work of three defense programs laboratories (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories) and university researchers nationally into a coordinated program administered by NNSA.
CTS-1 clusters support NNSA’s Life Extension Program and investigations into technical issues related to aging weapons systems, efforts critical to ensuring the safety security and reliability of the nuclear weapons in the stockpile as they age well beyond their intended deployment life.