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Summit’s Bonus Year of Scientific Achievement

Leadership-class supercomputers dedicated to open science are not built to last forever. In fact, they have a limited lifespan by design. No matter how powerful they may be on launch day, advancements in computing technology and changing computing needs will push them closer to obsolescence with each passing year until…
Coury Turczyn
December 3, 2024
ScienceTechnology

Solving the Protein Puzzle

A simple scoop of soil or water can hold an entire ecosystem–potentially millions or more microscopic organisms and the countless proteins they rely on to survive. Computations performed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could help count, sort and catalog each of those proteins in record…
Matt Lakin
October 28, 2022
ScienceTechnology

Fast-Tracking Medical Discovery

The world’s fastest supercomputer could help discover the next great cure hiding in plain sight. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used Frontier, the world’s first exascale computer, to scan hundreds of thousands of biomedical concepts from millions of scientific publications in search of potential…
Matt Lakin
October 25, 2022
bradykinin ORNLScience

Lab Experiments Support the COVID-19 Bradykinin Storm Theory

A new paper published in Nature Communications adds further evidence to the bradykinin storm theory of COVID-19’s viral pathogenesis—a theory that was posited 2 years ago by a team of researchers led by Systems Biologist Dan Jacobson at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). At…
Coury Turczyn
September 14, 2022
Science

COVID-19 in the Classroom: Simulating the Spread

A team led by Rao Kotamarthi at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) is using supercomputers at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to study how aerosol viral particles are distributed in a ventilated classroom. Using ORNL’s Summit, the nation’s fastest supercomputer, the team simulated the…
Rachel McDowell
February 24, 2022
Science

Supercomputing Exposes Potential Pathways for Inhibiting COVID-19

To explore the inner workings of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a novel technique. The team — including computational scientists Debsindhu Bhowmik, Serena Chen and John Gounley — ran molecular dynamics simulations of the novel virus…
Elizabeth Rosenthal
January 25, 2022
Visualization of an aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 particle with various components inside and outside the particle.Science

2021 at the OLCF: Year in Review

In 2021, supercomputing at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) enabled new scientific breakthroughs amid the global pandemic. From modeling small particles called quarks to simulating turbulence in fusion reactors, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's (OLCF's) flagship supercomputer, Summit, continued to provide unprecedented opportunities…
Rachel McDowell
December 30, 2021
Science

Two Finalists Nominated for Gordon Bell Special Prize for COVID-19 Work on Summit

Every year at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC), one deserving team is awarded the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Gordon Bell Prize to recognize an outstanding achievement in high-performance computing (HPC). Winners are chosen based on the demonstrated innovativeness of their algorithm development…
Rachel McDowell
November 18, 2020
Science

Mining for COVID-19 Connections

Scientists have tapped the immense power of the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to comb through millions of medical journal articles to identify potential vaccines, drugs and effective measures that could suppress or stop the spread of COVID-19. A team comprising researchers from ORNL and Georgia Tech are…
Katie Bethea
May 18, 2020
People

OLCF Staff and Researchers Make a Smooth Transition to Working Remotely

When the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) committed its IBM Power System AC922 Summit supercomputer to conducting open research in the fight against COVID-19, it initiated an unprecedented all-hands effort. Summit is currently running simulations for at least ten individual research projects by other national…
Coury Turczyn
April 29, 2020
Science

Summit Joins the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and the Summit supercomputer have joined forces with other U.S. Federal agencies, industry, and academic leaders to provide access to the world’s most powerful high-performance computing resources in support of COVID-19 research through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. The Consortium is a unique private-public…
Katie Bethea
March 30, 2020