[The Exiled]

U.S. near deal for nVidia supercomputer as it waits for delayed Intel machine

The U.S. Department of Energy is nearing a deal to purchase a supercomputer made with chips from nVidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) as a key lab waits for a larger supercomputer from Intel Corp (INTC.O) that has been delayed for months. The nVidia and AMD machine, to be called Polaris, will not be a replacement for the Intel-based Aurora machine slated for the Argonne National Lab near Chicago, which was poised to be the nation's fastest computer when announced in 2019. Instead, Polaris, which will come online this year, will be a test machine for Argonne to start readying its software for the Intel machine.

When Aurora was first announced, Intel and Argonne said the machine would be delivered in 2021, but Intel still has not delivered the key Ponte Vecchio and Sapphire Rapids chips. Intel said in June that the Sapphire Rapids chips would not be in production until 2022, and on Tuesday Intel spokesperson Will Moss said the company remained committed to delivering the computer in 2022. The $500 million contract called for Intel and partners to deliver a computer with so-called exaflop performance, or the ability to perform 1 quintillion - or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - calculations per second. Now, the first exascale computer in the United States will likely be a different machine at a different lab - Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee - built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (HPE.N) with chips from AMD expected to be delivered later this year.

Izvor: Reuters

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