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Title: Rekindle the Fire: Building Supercomputers to Solve Dynamic Problems

Journal Article · · Scientific Computing & Instrumentation
OSTI ID:15006563

Seymour Cray had a Lets go to the moon attitude when it came to building high-performance computers. His drive was to create architectures designed to solve the most challenging problems. Modern high-performance computer architects, however, seem to be focusing on building the largest floating-point-generation machines by using truckloads of commodity parts. Don't get me wrong; current clusters can solve a class of problems that are untouchable by any other system in the world, including the supercomputers of yesteryear. Many of the worlds fastest clusters provide new insights into weather forecasting, our understanding of fundamental sciences and provide the ability to model our nuclear stockpiles. Lets call this class of problem a first-principles simulation because the simulations are based on a fundamental physical understanding or model.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Lab., Richland, WA (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
US Department of Energy (US)
DOE Contract Number:
AC06-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
15006563
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-40391; KP1301030; TRN: US200411%%347
Journal Information:
Scientific Computing & Instrumentation, Other Information: PBD: 16 Feb 2004
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English