OLCF
Titan Cray XK7
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is home to Titan, the nation’s most powerful supercomputer for open science.
Titan is a hybrid-architecture Cray XK7 system with a theoretical peak performance exceeding 27,000 trillion calculations per second (27 petaflops). It contains both advanced 16-core AMD Opteron central processing units (CPUs) and NVIDIA Kepler graphics processing units (GPUs). GPUs are energy-efficient, high-performance chips originally developed for gaming systems. The combination of these two technologies allows Titan to achieve 10 times the speed and 5 times the energy efficiency of its predecessor, the Jaguar supercomputer, while using only modestly more energy and occupying the same physical footprint.
Titan features 18,688 compute nodes, a total system memory of 710 terabytes, and Cray’s high-performance Gemini network. Its 299,008 CPU cores guide simulations while the accompanying GPUs that can handle hundreds of calculations simultaneously. The system provides decreased time to solution, increased complexity of models, and greater realism in simulations.
Titan is enabling researchers across the scientific arena to acquire unparalleled accuracy in their simulations and achieve research breakthroughs more rapidly than ever before. OLCF simulations have improved the safety and performance of nuclear power plants, turbomachinery, and aircraft; aided understanding of climate change; sped development of new drugs and advanced materials; and guided design of the ITER international fusion reactor. Researchers have used OLCF systems to model supernovas, hurricanes, biofuels, neurodegenerative diseases, and clean combustion for power and propulsion.
Titan users have access to data analysis and visualization resources that include the Eos and Rhea systems and the Exploratory Visualization Environment for REsearch in Science and Technology, or EVEREST. Users also have access to file systems—like Spider for immediate data storage, with over 1,000 gigabytes per second of aggregate data bandwidth and more than 30 petabytes of storage capacity, and the High Performance Storage System (HPSS) for archival data storage—to manage the floods of data that Titan’s simulations generate. All of these resources are available through high-performance networks including ESnet’s upgraded 100 gigabit per second links.
Computational scientists gain access to OLCF’s cutting-edge facilities and support systems through three programs that allocate millions of processor hours. The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program, or INCITE, supports large-scale, high-impact projects that make concurrent use of at least 20 percent of Titan’s cores. The Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge, or ALCC program, primarily aids research that supports the energy mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and emphasizes high-risk, high-rewards endeavors. And the OLCF’s Director’s Discretionary program helps new high-performance computing users explore topics of national importance.
Research challenges remain, but Titan is helping launch a new era for science and engineering as computing approaches the exascale, or a million trillion calculations a second.
Titan Cray XK7
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is home to Titan, the nation’s most powerful supercomputer for open science.
Titan is a hybrid-architecture Cray XK7 system with a theoretical peak performance exceeding 27,000 trillion calculations per second (27 petaflops). It contains both advanced 16-core AMD Opteron central processing units (CPUs) and NVIDIA Kepler graphics processing units (GPUs). GPUs are energy-efficient, high-performance chips originally developed for gaming systems. The combination of these two technologies allows Titan to achieve 10 times the speed and 5 times the energy efficiency of its predecessor, the Jaguar supercomputer, while using only modestly more energy and occupying the same physical footprint.
Titan features 18,688 compute nodes, a total system memory of 710 terabytes, and Cray’s high-performance Gemini network. Its 299,008 CPU cores guide simulations while the accompanying GPUs that can handle hundreds of calculations simultaneously. The system provides decreased time to solution, increased complexity of models, and greater realism in simulations.
Titan is enabling researchers across the scientific arena to acquire unparalleled accuracy in their simulations and achieve research breakthroughs more rapidly than ever before. OLCF simulations have improved the safety and performance of nuclear power plants, turbomachinery, and aircraft; aided understanding of climate change; sped development of new drugs and advanced materials; and guided design of the ITER international fusion reactor. Researchers have used OLCF systems to model supernovas, hurricanes, biofuels, neurodegenerative diseases, and clean combustion for power and propulsion.
Titan users have access to data analysis and visualization resources that include the Eos and Rhea systems and the Exploratory Visualization Environment for REsearch in Science and Technology, or EVEREST. Users also have access to file systems—like Spider for immediate data storage, with over 1,000 gigabytes per second of aggregate data bandwidth and more than 30 petabytes of storage capacity, and the High Performance Storage System (HPSS) for archival data storage—to manage the floods of data that Titan’s simulations generate. All of these resources are available through high-performance networks including ESnet’s upgraded 100 gigabit per second links.
Computational scientists gain access to OLCF’s cutting-edge facilities and support systems through three programs that allocate millions of processor hours. The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program, or INCITE, supports large-scale, high-impact projects that make concurrent use of at least 20 percent of Titan’s cores. The Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge, or ALCC program, primarily aids research that supports the energy mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and emphasizes high-risk, high-rewards endeavors. And the OLCF’s Director’s Discretionary program helps new high-performance computing users explore topics of national importance.
Research challenges remain, but Titan is helping launch a new era for science and engineering as computing approaches the exascale, or a million trillion calculations a second.