NNSA Issues RFP for Next Super

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The National Nuclear Security Administration has announced they have issued a request for proposal [RFP] for a new capability computing platform.  The new platform, named Mesa, will support the needs of all three NNSA national labs after a projected 2010 installation date.  Mesa is being developed under a memorandum of understand [MOU] between Los Alamos National Lab and Sandia National Lab.  The MOU describes what the NNSA calls the New Mexico Alliance for Computing at Extreme Scales [ACES].  ACES will be devoted to providing HPC capability to the NNSA’s stockpile stewardship mission.

This new platform to conduct computing at extreme capabilities will allow NNSA to continue to maintain the safety, security and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing,” said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. “NNSA is proud that our investment in nuclear security has produced some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. We are confident that the Mesa platform will be our next groundbreaking platform, which will enable Los Alamos and Sandia to continue to make critical contributions advancing science and discovery.”

As a part of the new ACES alliance, LANL and Sandia will share intellectual capabilities in order to capitalize on existing expertise in architecture development and system management.  Los Alamos’ Strategic Computing Complex facility will actually house the platform.  Sandia and LANL are certainly no strangers to extreme scale computing.  LANL currently operates the IBM RoadRunner [#1 on Top500] machine and Sandia operates the Cray RedStorm [#13 on Top500].  For more info, read the full article here.