Events included the dedication of the supercomputer, the inauguration of the Computational Center for Industrial Innovation (CCII), a DOE national user facility, and demonstrations of high-performance computing applications in the CCII facility in Building 4500-South.
Several officials of the Intel Corp., manufacturer of the system, attended the event.
The XP/S 150 is the most powerful computing engine in the Center for Computational Sciences (CCS) at ORNL. The system has 1,024 computing nodes for a total of 3,096 processors, offering a peak performance of over 150 billion calculations per second (150 Gigaflops). The system was installed in January 1995 as the final in a series of machines resulting from a contract signed in 1992.
The CCS is one of two high-performance computing centers established by DOE to provide computing resources for "Grand Challenge" research. Grand Challenge involves solving problems ranging from energy research and environmental management to the human genome and the exploration of deep space. Solving the Grand Challenge is vital to the United States' industrial strength, educational system, environmental safety and national security.
ORNL is involved in a wide variety of Grand Challenge computing projects, which bring together in-house teams of computational mathematicians, computer scientists and research scientists with collaborating experts at other institutions.
The CCII user facility will serve as a focal point for industrial interactions and partnerships in the critical area of high-performance computing. One of the CCII goals is to assist U.S. companies in achieving and maintaining global competitiveness by providing access to the technical expertise of ORNL scientists and engineers through high-performance computing collaborations.
The center will have eight workstations for training along with conference areas and office space for support staff.
ORNL, one of DOE's multiprogram national research and development facilities, is managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, which also manages the Oak Ridge K-25 Site and the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant.