Aurora, built by Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is the latest supercomputer to come online at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago and is among a new breed of exascale supercomputers that draws on artificial intelligence. When fully operational in 2024, Aurora is expected to be the first such computer that will be able to achieve two quintillion operations per second. Brain analytics and the design of batteries that last longer and charge faster are among the vast potential uses of exascale machines. Continue reading Aurora Supercomputer Targets 2 Quintillion Ops per Second

Ten years ago AMD introduced the concept of smaller, interconnected chips that together work like one digital brain. Sometimes called “chiplets,” they’re generally less expensive than building one large chip, and when grouped together into bundles have often outperformed single wafters. In addition to AMD, companies including Apple, Amazon, Intel, IBM and Tesla have embraced the chiplet formula, which leverages advanced packaging technology, an integral part of building advanced semiconductors. Now experts are predicting packaging is going to be even more of a focus in coming years, as the global chip wars heat up. Continue reading Advanced Packaging for ‘Chiplets’ a Focus of CHIPS Funding

Cerebras Systems has unveiled its Andromeda AI supercomputer. With 13.5 million cores, it can calculate at the rate of 1 exaflop — roughly one quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeroes) operations — per second using a 16-bit floating point format. Andromeda’s brain is built of 16 linked Cerebras CS-2 systems, AI computers that use giant Wafer-Scale Engine 2 chips. Each chip has hundreds of thousands of cores, but is more compact and powerful than servers that use standard CPUs, according to Cerebras, which is making Andromeda available for commercial and academic research. Continue reading Cerebras Supercomputer Calculates at 1 Exaflop per Second

Intel is taking on Nvidia and AMD with its Max Series for high performance computing and artificial intelligence. The company unveiled two products under the Max umbrella: the Intel Xeon Max CPU and the Intel Data Center Max Series GPU. The Max GPU is Intel’s highest density processor, packing over 100 billion transistors into a 47-tile package with up to 128GB of high-bandwidth memory. The oneAPI open software ecosystem provides a single programming environment for both new processors, with Intel’s 2023 oneAPI and AI tools enabling the Intel Max Series products’ advanced features. Continue reading Intel Targets Supercomputing with New Max Series CPU, GPU

Intel announced the consumer GPU brand Arc last year, which the company now says will begin delivering in Q4. The Arc A770 Limited Edition desktop gaming card will be available October 12, starting at $329, “the sweet spot of desktop graphics,” according to CEO Pat Gelsinger, who said the GPU “delivers 65 percent better peak performance versus competition on ray tracing.” Intel says other new GPU models, including the Arc Pro A30M for mobile unveiled last month at SIGGRAPH, will also come to market by the end of the year. The new GPUs feature built-in ray tracing hardware, machine learning capabilities and industry-first AV1 hardware encoding acceleration. Continue reading New GPUs Showcased at Intel’s Innovation Developer Event

Cerebras Systems introduced its Wafer Scale Engine 2 (WSE-2) processor, which touts a record-breaking 2.6 trillion transistors and 850,000 AI-optimized cores, what the company describes as “the largest chip ever built.” Established by SeaMicro founder Andrew Feldman, Cerebras makes a massive chip out of a single wafer, unlike the typical process of slicing it into hundreds of separate chips. This is the company’s second chip that is built out of an entire wafer, wherein the pieces of the chip, dubbed cores, interconnect to enable the transistors to work together as one. Continue reading Cerebras Introduces AI Processor with 2.6 Trillion Transistors

The University of Chicago and partners launched the first U.S. program to support quantum-tech startups. University of Chicago physicist and molecular engineer professor David Awschalom, who helped create the Duality accelerator, said, “we are at the birth of a new field of technology … at the point where the transistor is being invented.” Chicago is home to three of the eight federally funded quantum research centers founded in 2020. The University of Toronto has also unveiled a program to support quantum-tech startups. Continue reading University of Chicago Debuts First U.S. Quantum Accelerator

Cerebras Systems and its partner, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), revealed that its CS-1 system, featuring a single massive chip that features an innovative design, is 10,000+ times faster than a graphics processing unit (GPU). The CS-1, built around Cerebas’ Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) and its 400,000 AI cores, was first announced in November 2019. The partnership between the Energy Department and Cerebras includes deployments with the Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Continue reading The Cerebras CS-1 Chip Is 10,000 Times Faster Than a GPU

The White House is planning a $1+ billion, five-year investment to fund 12 new research facilities on artificial intelligence, 5G, quantum information sciences and other emerging technologies. Federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will collaborate with private partners including major tech companies such as International Business Machines, Microsoft and others. The Trump administration proposes to spend 30 percent more on these technologies in the 2021 nondefense budget. Continue reading White House to Invest $1+ Billion in AI, Quantum Computing

The U.S. has unveiled a national project to build a quantum Internet, which would function alongside existing Internet networks. A quantum Internet is based on photons exhibiting a quantum state known as entanglement that allows it to share information over long distances without a physical connection. One goal of the project is to build a network that would be more secure and nearly unhackable. The Department of Energy created a strategy by which its 17 national labs would serve as a backbone for a prototype national quantum Internet to launch in 10 years. Continue reading Energy Department Plans to Build a Secure Quantum Internet

While the United States and China compete to create the world’s most powerful computers, a Japanese supercomputer, dubbed Fugaku, took first place in Top500’s speed ranking. At the Kobe-based RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Fugaku achieved 2.8 times more calculations per second than the previous speediest system, IBM’s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Fugaku, which pushed another IBM computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to third place, is based on ARM chip technology. Continue reading ARM-Based Japanese Supercomputer Now No. 1 on Top500

Nvidia unveiled its A100 artificial intelligence chip, which houses 54 billion transistors and can execute 5 petaflops of performance, about 20 times more than the company’s previous Volta chip. Chief executive Jensen Huang, who revealed it during his Nvidia GTC keynote address, dubbed it “the ultimate instrument for advancing AI.” The original March 24 introduction was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nvidia also unveiled the DGX A100 system, the third generation of Nvidia’s AI DGX platform, which uses the new chips. The DGX A100 is now shipping. Continue reading Nvidia A100: Powerful New Chipset Created for Advancing AI

Artificial intelligence and quantum computing would be awarded increased funding under the Trump administration’s proposed $4.8 trillion budget. The Defense Department and the National Science Foundation would receive more funds for AI research, and $25 million would go towards the creation of a national “quantum Internet,” aimed at making it more difficult to hack into digital communications. The proposed funding comes at a time that China has prioritized both new technologies, and the U.S. seeks to catch up. Continue reading Trump Administration Plans to Fund AI, Quantum Computing

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is acquiring Cray, a pioneer in supercomputing, for about $1.4 billion. With 1,300 employees, Cray, based in Seattle, was founded by Seymour Cray in 1972 in Minnesota and purchased in 1996 by Silicon Graphics. The company was later sold in 2000 to Tera Computer, which changed its name to Cray. Cray designed some of the most powerful supercomputers used by the military, intelligence agencies and for civilian companies involved in weather prediction, pharmaceutical research and auto design. Continue reading HPE Acquires Cray, Advancing Supercomputing in the U.S.