Aurora (supercomputer)
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| Aurora (supercomputer) | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Argonne National Laboratory · Public domain · source | |
| Name | Aurora |
| Caption | Aurora supercomputer (planned) |
| Operator | Argonne National Laboratory |
| Location | Lemont, Illinois |
| Manufacturer | Intel Corporation; Cray (HPE) |
| Introduced | 2021 (announced) |
| Status | planned/operational |
| Peak | 1 exaFLOPS (target) |
| Memory | proprietary |
| Storage | Lustre-like filesystems |
| Purpose | scientific computing, national laboratories |
Aurora (supercomputer) Aurora is a planned exascale-class high-performance computing system intended for deployment at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. Announced through contracts and partnerships involving U.S. Department of Energy, Intel Corporation, Cray Inc. (acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise), and NERSC-adjacent programs, Aurora is positioned to support scientific projects across Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and other National Laboratories. The machine is framed within U.S. initiatives such as the Exascale Computing Project and collaborations with academic partners including University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and California Institute of Technology.
Overview
Aurora was funded via procurement awards from the U.S. Department of Energy and contract vehicles involving Argonne National Laboratory and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The project ties into strategic programs such as the Exascale Computing Project, the Advanced Scientific Computing Research office, and national efforts exemplified by the National Strategic Computing Initiative. Aurora’s mission includes accelerating research for agencies like Department of Energy Office of Science, contributing to initiatives at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and supporting collaborations with institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and Princeton University.
Design and Architecture
Aurora’s architecture was proposed as a heterogeneous system combining processors from Intel Corporation and accelerators in a design lineage tied to systems like Cray XC40, Cray-2, and successor HPE designs. The system leverages network topologies informed by research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and designs used at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. Aurora’s planned architecture references interconnect technologies similar to those used in Cray Aries networks, concepts from InfiniBand deployments, and shared-file semantics implemented in filesystems akin to Lustre and parallel I/O stacks used at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. The design incorporates lessons from exascale prototypes such as Summit (supercomputer) and Frontier (supercomputer).
Hardware and Performance
Hardware elements cited in Aurora specifications include many-core CPUs from Intel Xeon families and accelerators inspired by Intel Xe HPC designs, comparable to hardware used in NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Instinct deployments at other laboratories. The machine’s peak performance target aimed for 1 exaFLOPS of mixed-precision or double-precision throughput, placing it among exascale peers like Frontier and continental efforts such as Fugaku. Storage subsystems were planned to use high-performance parallel file systems similar to Lustre with object-storage concepts akin to Ceph used in research clusters at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Cooling, power, and floor-space considerations referenced standards from High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart and rack designs seen in NERSC Perlmutter.
Software and Programming Environment
Aurora’s software stack was intended to support programming models and tools drawn from the Exascale Computing Project, including portable abstractions such as MPI and OpenMP, as well as accelerator-aware models like SYCL and Kokkos used across DOE labs. System software would integrate resource managers influenced by SLURM and monitoring systems akin to those deployed at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. Scientific codes targeted include climate models from NOAA-linked projects, materials codes developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and fusion simulation packages from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, requiring compilers and libraries compatible with toolchains from Intel Corporation and open-source ecosystems maintained by Linux Foundation projects.
Development History and Deployment
Aurora’s procurement and development involved milestone announcements with participation from U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory, Intel Corporation, and later coordination with Hewlett Packard Enterprise after corporate acquisitions such as Cray acquisition by HPE. Timelines referenced schedules aligned with U.S. exascale roadmaps published by Office of Science leadership and researchers at University of Chicago. Deployment planning engaged site preparations at Argonne campus infrastructure teams and utility coordination with regional entities in Illinois. The program intersected with prior deployments like Theta (supercomputer) and informed subsequent rollouts at facilities such as Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.
Applications and Use Cases
Aurora was intended to support large-scale science across domains championed by Department of Energy programs: materials science efforts at Argonne Materials Science Division, cosmology simulations coordinated with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, climate modeling in collaboration with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and nuclear physics research allied to Brookhaven National Laboratory. Use cases included exascale-enabled workflows in computational chemistry from groups at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, machine-learning-driven discovery from teams at Carnegie Mellon University and Purdue University, and extreme-scale data analysis complementing experiments at Large Hadron Collider-partner institutions and observatories like NOIRLab.
Controversies and Impact
Aurora’s development intersected with debates involving procurement practices overseen by U.S. Department of Energy acquisition offices, debates in Congress on funding for national laboratory infrastructure, and scrutiny from oversight entities including Government Accountability Office-style reviews. Critics referenced concerns common to large procurements similar to those that surrounded projects at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory while proponents highlighted scientific returns analogous to outcomes from Summit and Frontier. The anticipated impact included bolstering U.S. competitiveness relative to efforts in Japan with Fugaku and in Europe with national supercomputing centers such as French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission facilities, and influencing workforce development at partner universities including University of Chicago and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.