Aurora’s growth has been troubled of late, and it was presupposed to first come on-line in 2018 as an exascale supercomputer. However, as Intel canceled the Knights Hills GPUs supposed for Aurora and its 10nm node was nowhere close to prepared for supercomputer-class chips on the time, the challenge was considerably delayed. It was finally upgraded to a two exaflop machine to make up for the delays, and earlier this yr it was lastly assembled.
Although Aurora might finally come totally on-line, it is taken so lengthy that AMD’s subsequent supercomputer is ready within the wings. El Capitan, which makes use of fourth era EPYC Genoa CPUs, is ready to be accomplished subsequent yr. Since the Top500 record is simply up to date twice a yr, Aurora must get totally on-line by June with a view to squeak by El Capitan. The Top500 record is not an important factor for Aurora after all, however it will actually be a disgrace for Intel and Argonne if the supercomputer that they’ve toiled so arduous to get to working by no means takes the highest spot on the coveted supercomputer record. Time will inform.
