World's Fastest Supercomputer

Jan 31, 2019

WorkingBuildings recently assisted Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the US Department of Energy, and IBM with the recently introduced Summit, America’s latest supercomputer, which is expected to be named the world’s most powerful computer.

Summit more than doubles the top speeds of the current fastest supercomputer located in China. It is expected to be officially named the fastest supercomputer. Once this happens, Summit should remain the fastest supercomputer for some time to come.

Summit is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The supercomputer takes up 5,600 square-feet of floor space, and weighs over 340 tons. The system is connected by 185 miles of fiber-optic cables, and can store 250 petabytes of data, which is equal to 74 years of HD video. Summit will allow researchers to apply machine learning to areas such as high-energy physics and human health.

WorkingBuildings worked with the design team, the construction team, project team, the DOE and ORNL, as well as IBM to understand the challenges they had been experiencing with the cooling systems serving the supercomputers at three previous installations. Three previous supercomputers in Asia, South America, and one in Europe has developed cooling issues.

Working with IMB’s supercomputer group based in Switzerland, we developed a cooling system that pumps more than 4,000 gallons of water through the system every minute, carrying away nearly 13 megawatts of heat from the system. WorkingBuildings also modified the design and the operating sequences to address previous operational issues, allowing Summit to run at full speed without limitations.