Getting to Exascale Day 2022 with an Exascale System Wasn’t Easy

Finally, after 15-plus years of intellectual strain (planning), bureaucratic wrangling (budgeting), technical toil (system building) and, probably, some tears, the HPC community has arrived at an Exascale Day, October 18 (1018), on which we actually have a certified exaFLOPS supercomputer: Frontier, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Exascale is no longer in the future, it’s here, […]

Aurora on Schedule? Intel Says it’s Shipping Ponte Vecchio-Sapphire Rapids Blades to Argonne

The rumors had begun to cirulate – October is near, that starts the fourth quarter, 2023 isn’t far behind, all of which means Intel is coming up against a hard deadline to deliver its delayed Aurora exascale-class supercomputer to Argonne National Laboratory by the end of the year. Is another delay in the offing?
Then, yesterday, Intel tweeted this out: “Server blades with Intel 4th Gen Xeon and Ponte Vecchio, which uses Intel’s most advanced IP and packaging technology, are now shipping to Argonne National Labs to power the Aurora supercomputer!” And the tweet was backed by comments to the same effect from CEO Pat Gelsinger