
Intel will use the company's new Xe GPU architecture to build the first exascale supercomputer in the United States, underlining the chipmaker's ambitions to up the competition with Nvidia in the high-performance computing space.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said the supercomputer, named Aurora, is being developed for the U.S. Department of Energy at its Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. The contract, which is slated for completion in 2021, is valued at more than $500 million.
[Related: Intel, AMD Lock Horns Over High-Performance Computing Prowess]
The timeline provides a hint as to when Intel may release a data center product using its new Xe GPU architecture that was first detailed during the Intel Architecture Day event held in December. Intel has said that its first discrete graphics card product will release for consumers in 2020, and that products in other segments, including data center, will follow.
The Aurora supercomputer will be capable of performing 1 exaflop, or a quintillion floating point computations per second, Intel said. Summit, the world's current fastest supercomputer that uses IBM Power9 CPUs with Nvidia CPUs, is capable of performing 200 petaflops, or 200 quadrillion calculations per second.
During a presentation, Rajeeb Hazra, the executive in charge of Intel's government and enterprise business, said that the upcoming Aurora supercomputer will use the company's new "Xe Compute Architecture," but declined to provide any details surrounding the technology itself.
He said the Xe Compute Architecture will "address new workload needs, particularly the kinds of workloads that will be coming in with the convergence of [high-performance computing, artificial intelligence] and data analytics."
Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Nor-Tech, a Burnsville, Minn.-based high-performance computing systems builder, said he wouldn't be surprised if Intel avoided referring to a data center GPU product as a GPU because of its connotation with graphics cards.
Nvidia, for instance, refers to its Tesla processor for data centers as both a GPU and an accelerator.
"In many people’s minds, GPUs are just graphics," he said. "This is just a pure compute device here."
Intel said it will use the Xe Compute Architecture in combination with next-generation versions of the Intel Xeon Scalable Processor and Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory for the Aurora supercomputer. The company, which is working with supercomputing vendor Cray on the project, will also use its new One API software, which will provide developers to map software to specific hardware, such as a CPU, GPU or AI accelerator.
"This supercomputer will drive unprecedented innovation that accelerates the convergence of traditional [high-performance computing] data analytics and AI at exascale," Hazra, the Intel executive, said.
related stories
Video
trending stories
sponsored resources

Trend Micro
Managed Security 360

HubStor
Cloud Backup 360

Cysurance
Cyber Insurance 360

Tenable
Cyber Risk 360

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Cloud Learning Center

EPOS
EPOS

Fujifilm
Fujifilm

Application Integration 360

Mimecast
Mimecast

Comcast
Comcast Business Learning Center

Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Storage Learning Center

Carbonite
Cloud Storage 360

Sophos
Sophos Cybersecurity Learning Center

Webroot
Webroot Learning Center

BlackBerry
BlackBerry Learning Center

NPD
Industry Trends 360

Symantec
Symantec Business Security Learning Center

Channel Chief Showcase

Acer
Remote Workforce 360

Sherweb
Sherweb

APC by Schneider Electric
Digital Services for Edge Learning Center

VMware

StorageCraft
Disaster Recovery Learning Center

Vertiv
Edge Computing Learning Center

Wasabi
Wasabi

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Hybrid Cloud Learning Center

Cradlepoint
5g for Business 360

Comm100
Collaboration & Communications 360

Veeam
Veeam

Trend Micro
Trend Micro Learning Center

eSentire
Managed Detection and Response 360
