New supercomputer to help national laboratories maintain nuclear weapons



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LIVERMORE (BCN)

"Sierra," described by officials from the US Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as the third fastest supercomputer in the world, will soon provide the country 's three nuclear safety laboratories with their best simulations. nuclear weapons to date.

The huge supercomputer was unveiled Friday at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and will perform simulations to support not only this lab, but also Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Its primary mission will be to ensure the safety, security and efficiency of the United States nuclear stock.

"This machine represents a new approach to high performance computing that will allow us to address and answer scientific questions that were previously beyond our reach," said Bill Goldstein, director of Lawrence Livermore, in a communicated. "This is a defining moment in the history of Livermore and a new step in our leadership in high performance computing and simulation."

Sierra's maximum performance capability is 125 quadrillions of "floating point" operations – those involving numbers including decimals – per second. These capabilities are particularly important as these labs are responsible for maintaining an aging nuclear stockpile, "said Mike Dunning, LLNL's Acting Senior Assistant Director of Weapons Program.


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