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OLCF technology articles.

ScienceTechnology

Weaving wonders

Ounce for ounce, carbon fiber could quickly become the wonder material of the future. The material, already used in a variety of products, boasts densities comparable to plastic, strengths comparable to steel and versatilities comparable to rubber under the right conditions. Its fibers, spun from organic carbon polymer strands thinner…
Matt Lakin
June 14, 2022
Simulation of a planeIndustryScienceTechnology

Speeding up simulations

Artificial intelligence has transformed industrial research and development in recent decades during what scientists call "the AI revolution." The technology enables detailed simulations and high-speed modeling that can streamline the journey from drawing board to production line by speeding up or cutting out costly, time-consuming steps to a practical working…
Matt Lakin
June 13, 2022
OLCF HistoryScienceTechnology

Pushing the new Frontier

The numbers are in, Frontier ranks No. 1, and the researchers of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's National Center for Computational Sciences are finally breathing a few sighs of relief. Teams worked around the clock for months to help prepare the new HPE Cray EX supercomputer and gauge its record-setting exascale…
Matt Lakin
June 8, 2022
ScienceTechnology

From Summit to the Stars

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) wrapped up its 2021 hackathon with teams from around the globe working on projects that spanned the cosmos. Ten teams with a total of 71 participants from 21 organizations took part in the October hackathon hosted by the OLCF, home to Summit, the nation’s…
Matt Lakin
March 18, 2022
Technology

Team Taps ORNL’s DataFed to Gain Materials Insights

A team led by to Joshua Agar, a faculty member in Lehigh University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has realized the first live implementation of an innovative data management system at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Called DataFed, the system was designed to allow…
Rachel McDowell
January 25, 2022
ScienceTechnology

Firing Up Quantum Fidelity

Researchers used the Quantum Computing User Program (QCUP) at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to achieve major improvements in quantum fidelity, a potential step toward more accurate, reliable quantum networks and supercomputers. Quantum computing relies on transfer and storage of information via quantum bits,…
Matt Lakin
January 7, 2022
ScienceTechnology

Thinking outside the Black Box

A study led by scientists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) plumbs the depths of deep learning and could connect the digital synapses toward better, more reliable artificial-intelligence (AI) models. The research team from ORNL and the National Energy Technology Laboratory used Summit, the…
Matt Lakin
January 6, 2022
Technology

A New Design for Quantum Computer–Monitored Electrical Grids

With support from the Quantum Computer User Program (QCUP) at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), researchers from Cornell University have developed a new quantum computer–based artificial intelligence (AI) system for identifying and diagnosing faults in electrical power grids. The framework promises much faster response times and smarter solutions…
Coury Turczyn
December 13, 2021
ORNL AAIMS groupTechnology

ORNL’s AAIMS Group Scores Two Awards

Two different studies produced by the Analytics and AI Methods at Scale (AAIMS) group, which resides within the National Center for Computational Sciences at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, won best paper awards at both the Bench’21 and SC21 conferences—all in the same week. On…
Coury Turczyn
December 7, 2021
ORNL AAIMS groupTechnology

Digging Deep into HPC Power and Cooling

Managing a supercomputer requires operators to collect and analyze data generated from the machine itself. This data includes everything from job failure rates to power consumption figures. Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have gathered an unprecedented amount of operational data from Summit, the…
Coury Turczyn
November 15, 2021
David GrantTechnology

Podcast: Guiding the Design and Construction of the Mechanical Systems

The Exascale Computing Project's Let's Talk Exascale Podcast kicked off a series on Frontier, the nation’s first exascale supercomputer. In the second episode, David Grant, the high-performance computing lead engineer in ORNL’s Laboratory Modernization Division, spoke with Scott Gibson. David is responsible for ensuring every new supercomputer system that’s installed…
Katie Bethea
November 2, 2021
The Road to ExascaleOLCF HistoryTechnology

The Road to Exascale

Solving the world’s biggest challenges requires the most sophisticated scientific tools, including fast and powerful supercomputers. That’s why the US Department of Energy (DOE) devotes so many resources to designing and building next-generation systems. But back in 2008, the feasibility of exascale-class computing—supercomputers that can perform exaflops, or a billion…
Coury Turczyn
October 18, 2021
exascale obstaclesScienceTechnology

Exascale Computing’s Four Biggest Challenges and How They Were Overcome

In 2008, the Exascale Study Group (ESG) issued a report, Technology Challenges in Achieving Exascale Systems, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It concluded that exascale supercomputers faced four major obstacles—power consumption, data movement, fault tolerance, and extreme parallelism—“where current technology trends are simply insufficient, and significant new…
Coury Turczyn
October 18, 2021
Technology

Benchmarking Mixed-Precision Performance

Today at ISC High Performance 2021, a European virtual conference for high-performance computing (HPC), the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Summit was ranked as the world’s second-fastest supercomputer in the 57th TOP500 list. But it also took second place in a relatively new benchmark test apart from the main…
Coury Turczyn
June 28, 2021