U.S. to Spend $425 Million on Supercomputers

China is now providing competition to the USA. Aivars Lode avantce

U.S. to Spend $425 Million on Supercomputers

By Don Clark
Updated Nov. 14, 2014 1:07 p.m. ET
Energy Department to Install Two IBM Systems, Invest in ‘Extreme Scale’ Technologies

The federal government said Friday it will spend $425 million to advance supercomputer technology, the latest sign of its determination to leap frog China in a field often linked to national security and economic competitiveness.

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to install two International Business Machines Corp. systems valued at $325 million at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee The project, called Coral, also includes Argonne National Laboratory. The machines, which will incorporate technology from chip maker Nvidia Corp. , will carry out calculations five to seven times faster than the most advanced U.S. systems now in use, the department said.

Another $100 million will go toward developing “extreme scale” supercomputing technologies as part of a program titled FastForward 2. Illinois-based Argonne would pick a supercomputer under the Coral program later, the agency said.

Supercomputers, room-size systems that comprise thousands of microprocessor chips, perform tasks that include simulating nuclear explosions, cracking encryption codes, projecting climate trends and locating oil deposits. China’s 2013 success in building a system that topped a closely watched ranking of computer performance—interrupting years of U.S. dominance—prompted calls by U.S. scientists for greater government support.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who announced the projects Friday at an event in Washington, D.C., said in prepared remarks that they would foster “transformational advancements in basic science, national defense, environmental and energy research.”