Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
El Capitan is expected to supply valuable simulation capabilities for the LEP by providing weapons designers with the computational tools that will allow them to explore new materials and components. It will improve the robustness and safety of the research, reduce the costs of maintenance and reduce the cost of manufacturing. El Capitan will allow faster and more detailed 3D modeling and simulation. Areas of basic science beyond nuclear security will also benefit from access to high-resolution multi-physics simulations. These research areas include cancer research, design optimization for 3D printing, seismologic and astrophysics.
Bill Goldstein is the Director of the LLNL. He said, “We are proud to partner with Cray in the coming years to usher in the era of exascale computing at LLNL, beginning the next chapter in the long, storied history we have at this Laboratory in leading-edge supercomputing. El Capitan will allow our scientists and engineers to get answers to critical questions about the nuclear stockpile faster and more accurately than ever before, improving our efficiency and productivity, and enhancing our ability to reach our mission and national security goals.”
El Capitan will be built on Cray’s Shasta architecture and will incorporate Shasta computer nodes and a next generation ClusterStor storage system. This unique design will be connected with Cray’s new Slingshot high-speed interconnect. Cray’s Shasta hardware and software system can utilize a variety of processors and accelerators. This means that Cray and LLNL will collaborate in the near future to make final decisions on exactly which processors and GPU components to use at the node level to maximize performance for the workloads which are anticipated to be huge.
Pete Ungaro is the president and CEO of Cray. He said, “We are honored to be a part of this historic moment to deliver the next U.S. exascale supercomputing system to the DOE, NNSA and LLNL in support of their incredibly important mission. We couldn’t be more excited that Cray’s Shasta systems, software and Slingshot interconnect will be the foundation for the first three U.S. exascale systems. El Capitan will incorporate foundational new software technologies from Cray that are critical for the exascale era where digital transformation and the convergence of modeling simulation, analytics and AI are driving new, data-intensive workloads at extreme scale.”
The El Capitan program is part of the DoE Exascale Computing initiative. LLNL researchers are working on the development of applications and software technologies that will need to be ready in order for El Capitan to function properly on the day that it is turned on. There are plans to create a “center for excellence” in the near future in collaboration with Cray to port and optimize existing codes that currently in use at LLNL. It is hoped that these preparatory steps will be completed by the time El Capitan is operational so that new work can begin immediately. Fortunately, the DoE investment in the El Capitan system will be of great benefit beyond its use for nuclear weapons maintenance and development.