#Intel #Powered #Aurora #Supercomputer #Gunning #AMD #Frontier #Catch
Aurora’s development has been troubled of late, and it was supposed to first come online in 2018 as an exascale supercomputer. However, as Intel canceled the Knights Hills GPUs intended for Aurora and its 10nm node was nowhere near ready for supercomputer-class chips at the time, the project was significantly delayed. It was eventually upgraded to a two exaflop machine to make up for the delays, and earlier this year it was finally assembled.
Although Aurora may eventually come fully online, it’s taken so long that AMD’s next supercomputer is waiting in the wings. El Capitan, which uses fourth generation EPYC Genoa CPUs, is set to be completed next year. Since the Top500 list is only updated twice a year, Aurora needs to get fully online by June in order to squeak by El Capitan. The Top500 list isn’t the most important thing for Aurora of course, but it would certainly be a shame for Intel and Argonne if the supercomputer that they’ve toiled so hard to get to working never takes the top spot on the coveted supercomputer list. Time will tell.
