Call for Proposals Open to Develop Discovery Supercomputer’s First Science Applications

Call for Proposals Open to Develop Discovery Supercomputer’s First Science Applications

The challenge of building the most powerful supercomputers in history is one thing. Developing complex scientific applications large enough to run on them is another. Starting January 12, through March 16, 2026, researchers will have the opportunity to apply to be the first users on the Discovery supercomputer, arriving in…

Jeremy RumseyJanuary 12, 2026

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant sits along a mountainous cliffside overlooking the ocean.

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Frontier Supercomputer Ushers in New Era of Nuclear AI

Nuclear power is rising to meet the demand for American energy. But building new reactors or even renewing licenses of existing ones requires a tremendous amount of paperwork. Fortunately, AI is also on the rise, and paperwork is one of the things it does best. In an innovative new AI…

Jeremy RumseyDecember 11, 2025

A collage of images taken from computer simulations of the universe featuring the arrangement of stars and the density of gasses in bright colors.

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Largest-Ever Universe Simulation Up for Supercomputing’s Highest Prize

Last fall, as the finalists for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize were waiting to hear their names called, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories had just finished running the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted — and now, it…

Jeremy RumseyNovember 14, 2025

Computerized image of an active earthquake moving over mountains overlayed with animated simulation data showing the motion of earthquake ground motions.

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Exascale Simulations Underpin Quake-Resistant Infrastructure Designs

Simulations still can’t predict exactly when an earthquake will happen, but with the incredible processing power of modern exascale supercomputers, they can now predict how they will happen and how much damage they will likely cause. Imagine, a colossal earthquake strikes the California coast along the San Andreas Fault, one…

Jeremy RumseyAugust 18, 2025

photo of hands with black gloves working with incredibly thin strands of carbon fiber laid out over a white sheet of paper

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Simulations Reveal the Secret to Strengthening Carbon Fiber

Stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum, carbon fiber is a staple in aerospace and high-performance vehicles — and now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found a way to make it even stronger. ORNL researchers simulated 5 million atoms to study a novel process…

Jeremy RumseyJune 19, 2025

Illustration of the GRETA detector, a spherical array of metal cylinders. The detector is divided into two halves to show the inside of the machine. Both halves are attached to metal harnesses, displayed against a black and green cyber-themed background.

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Novel Data Streaming Software Chases Light Speed from Accelerator to Supercomputer

Analyzing massive datasets from nuclear physics experiments can take hours or days to process, but researchers are working to radically reduce that time to mere seconds using special software being developed at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge national laboratories. DELERIA — short for Distributed Event-Level Experiment…

Jeremy RumseyMay 19, 2025

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ORNL, IQM Introduce Quantum Computing to 2025 Winter Classic Cluster Competition

Quantum computing might still be in its infancy, but it’s hardly a buzzword anymore, and leading computing experts are already preparing for the future generation of users. In February, computing staff from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory took part in the 2025 Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster…

Jeremy RumseyApril 15, 2025

Different groups of proteins shown in different colors combine and attach to a broken strand of DNA.

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Summit Supercomputer Draws Molecular Blueprint for Repairing Damaged DNA

Sunburns and aging skin are obvious effects of exposure to harmful UV rays, tobacco smoke and other carcinogens. But the effects aren’t just skin deep. Inside the body, DNA is literally being torn apart. Understanding how the body heals and protects itself from DNA damage is vital for treating genetic…

Jeremy RumseyMarch 12, 2025

Group of 70 students sit at tables and listen to a presenter during a computing session.

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OLCF-Led HPC Crash Course Drives Career Development at SC24

Not only did the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory take home top honors at the 2024 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC24), but the lab’s computing staff also shared career advice and expertise with students eager to enter the world of supercomputing. The…

Jeremy RumseyFebruary 21, 2025

birds eye view of earth overlayed with wavy lines arstically representing gravity waves

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Decoding Atmospheric Effects of Gravity Waves

Researchers at Stanford University, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, or ECMWF, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the lab’s Summit supercomputer to better understand atmospheric gravity waves, which influence significant weather patterns that are difficult to forecast. First, the team conducted ultrahigh-resolution climate simulations using the ECMWF Integrated Forecast…

Jeremy RumseyDecember 23, 2024

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OLCF Conference Outreach Teaches HPC Fundamentals, Prepares Young Professionals

The National Center for Computational Sciences, located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, made a strong showing at computing conferences this fall. Staff from across the center participated in numerous workshops and invited speaking engagements. In September and October, staff from the NCCS and the Oak Ridge…

Jeremy RumseyDecember 13, 2024

winners of the 2024 Gordon Bell Prize are awarded on stage

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Game-Changing Quantum Chemistry Calculations on Frontier Earn Gordon Bell Prize

This year’s Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Prize in supercomputing goes to researchers led by the University of Melbourne who used the Frontier supercomputer to conduct a quantum molecular dynamics simulation 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any previous simulation of its kind. The team also includes…

Jeremy RumseyNovember 22, 2024

Award recipients of the 2024 Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling stand on stage

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Gordon Bell Climate Prize Goes to KAUST Frontier Users’ Exascale Climate Emulator

The 2024 Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling has been awarded to a team of researchers led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, Saudi Arabia, who used the Frontier supercomputer to develop an exascale climate emulator with radically enhanced resolution but without the computational expense…

Jeremy RumseyNovember 22, 2024

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Record-Breaking Run on Frontier Sets New Bar for Simulating the Universe in the Exascale Era

The universe just got a whole lot bigger — or at least in the world of computer simulations, that is. In early November, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory used the fastest supercomputer on the planet to run the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted.…

Jeremy RumseyNovember 19, 2024

photograph of the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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Gordon Bell Prize Nomination Recognizes Efforts to Train Extreme Scale Large Language Models Using Frontier

A research team led by the University of Maryland has been nominated for the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Prize. The team is being recognized for developing a scalable, distributed training framework called AxoNN, which leverages GPUs to rapidly train large language models, or LLMs. Winners of the Gordon…

Jeremy RumseyNovember 12, 2024

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Frontier Users’ Exascale Climate Emulator Nominated for Gordon Bell Climate Prize

A multi-institutional team of researchers led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, Saudi Arabia, has been nominated for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling. The team developed an exascale climate emulator with radically enhanced resolution but without the computational…

Jeremy RumseyOctober 30, 2024

Researcher Giuseppe Barca looks at a molecular dynamics simulation on a computer screen.

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Frontier Quantum Chemistry Calculations Nominated to Win HPC’s Highest Prize

Researchers led by the University of Melbourne, Australia, have been nominated for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize in supercomputing for conducting a quantum molecular dynamics simulation 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any previous simulation of its kind. The team also includes researchers from AMD, QDX…

Jeremy RumseyOctober 17, 2024

Map of the US as seen from space, encircled by a ring of streaming data that connects a supercomputer, a scientific detector, and molecules.

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Standing up the Nation’s Supercomputing Pipeline for Streaming Big Data in Real Time

Big science generates big data. But what happens when researchers produce more data than they can process? It’s actually becoming a problem for research facilities that generate so much data that only supercomputers can tackle the volume. To bridge the gap between experimental facilities and supercomputers, experts from SLAC National…

Jeremy RumseyOctober 14, 2024

Technician places obsolete hard drives into container to be safely destroyed.

Featured OLCF History Technology

Retiring — and Shredding — the Alpine Storage System

Ever wonder what happens to massive supercomputing systems when they’re retired? Surprisingly, when it comes to the data, it’s not too different from disposing of old documents — they go straight into a shredder and sent to recycling. At the end of 2023, the Summit supercomputer — formerly the world’s…

Jeremy RumseySeptember 17, 2024

The Frontier supercomputer simulated magnetic responses inside calcium-48, depicted by red and blue spheres. Insights into the nucleus’s fundamental forces could shed light on supernova dynamics.

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Frontier Simulations Provide New Insights Into Calcium-48’s Controversial Nuclear Magnetic Excitation

The nucleus of an atom is almost inconceivably small, and most people have little idea just how much of the world around them is shaped by the strong nuclear forces that hold those tiny subatomic particles together. Nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently used…

Jeremy RumseySeptember 3, 2024

Jeremy Rumsey