ITL gains new high-performance computing system

U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Published Aug. 8, 2022
Updated: Aug. 8, 2022
The Onyx supercomputer

The Onyx supercomputer, housed at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Information Technology Laboratory, will be retired in August 2023 making room for a new 277,428 core HPE Cray EX-4000 with AMD Genoa processors. The Onyx system has been a vital high-performance computing asset to the Department of Defense for over six years. (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers photo)

Supercomputing Resource Center

A new 277,428 core HPE Cray EX-4000 with AMD Genoa processors supercomputer will be installed at the U.S Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Department of Defense (DOD) Supercomputing Resource Center and will serve users from all services and agencies of the department. The new system will support the DOD science and technology, test and evaluation and acquisition engineering communities and will significantly enhance the ERDC’s ability to support the DOD’s most demanding computational challenges. (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers photo)

A new supercomputer will soon call the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) home. The system will support the Department of Defense (DOD) science and technology, test and evaluation and acquisition engineering communities and will significantly enhance ERDC’s ability to support the DOD’s most demanding computational challenges.

“The awarded system is a 277,428 core HPE Cray EX-4000 with AMD Genoa processors,” said ITL Supercomputing Research Center (SRC) Chief Bobby Hunter. “This system will fill the capability that will be lost in August 2023 as we retire Onyx, our Cray XE system that has been a vital high-performance computing asset to the DOD for over six years.”

The High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), which is both managed by and headquartered at ERDC, acquired the system and corresponding hardware and software services. HPCMP provides the DOD with supercomputing capabilities, high-speed network communications and computational science expertise that enable scientists and engineers to conduct a wide range of activities. At 9 petaflops, the procurement will increase the program’s collective supercomputing capability to ~120 petaflops.

“This system will provide new technologies in both processor and interconnect speed,” said Hunter. “The processor is AMD’s latest, and each chip is comprised of 96 cores. There will be two chips per node, providing each with 192 cores and 384 gigabytes of memory.

“The interconnect allows the processors across the system to collectively compute on a single problem and provides 200 Gbps of bandwidth between nodes,” continued Hunter. “Ultimately, this system will provide more compute capability to the HPC user community and will be the second largest unclassified HPC in the DOD.”

HPCMP strives to put advanced technology in the hands of U.S. forces more quickly, less expensively and with greater certainty of success. Their efforts include unique expertise in software development and system design and a premier wide-area research network. The new supercomputer will be installed at the ERDC DOD Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC) and will serve users from all services and agencies of the department.

“ERDC has supported the DOD HPC user community for 30 years,” said Hunter. “Throughout the DOD, communities depend on our resources to help them solve the most computationally challenging problems. HPC is a cross-cutting capability across multiple domains.”