Inside a vast data center on the outskirts of Chicago, the most powerful supercomputer in the world is coming to life. The machine will be able to analyze connections inside the brain and help design batteries that charge faster and last longer. Called Aurora, the supercomputer’s high-performance capabilities will be matched with the latest advances in artificial intelligence. Together they will be used by scientists researching cancer, nuclear fusion, vaccines, climate change, encryption, cosmology and other complex sciences and technologies.
Housed at the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory, Aurora is among a new breed of machines known as “exascale” supercomputers. In a single second, an exascale computer can perform one quintillion operations—a billion billion, or a one followed by 18 zeros. Aurora is the size of two tennis courts, weighs 600 tons and is expected to be the world’s first supercomputer capable of two quintillion operations a second at peak performance, scientists at Argonne said.
The world’s fastest supercomputer, coming to life in Illinois, aims for two quintillion operations a second https://t.co/tHRnONyVYh
— Real Time Economics (@WSJecon) November 14, 2023