US plans to build the world's fastest supercomputer NASA's InSight lander detects first likely ‘marsquake’
WASHINGTON -- The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Tuesday its plan to deliver the world's most powerful computer in 2021, with a performance of about 12 times the speed rating of the fastest computing system built to date.
The system, called Frontier and based on AMD's high-performance, AI-optimized CPU and GPU technology, will run at a speed greater than 1.5 exaflops, according to DOE.
It came after the DOE unveiled its plan in March to build an exascale supercomputer called Aurora based on Intel's CPU technology, which can run at a speed greater than one exaflop. Aurora is also to be delivered in 2021.
An exaflop is a quintillion of calculations per second. A quintillion is a one with a whopping 18 zeros behind it.
"Frontier will accelerate innovation in AI by giving American researchers world-class data and computing resources to ensure the next great inventions are made in the United States," US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said.
The IBM supercomputer, called Summit, is currently ranked as the fastest computing system in the world, a notch occupied by China's Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe 2A for five year s.
Summit's top performance is 122.3 petaflops while its theoretical performance may reach 200 petaflops. (One exaflop is 1,000 petaflops.)
The Frontier is to be installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee State where Summit is currently installed.
Its total contract value is more than USD600 million, about USD100 million more than the Aurora contract, according to the DOE.
However, Frontier and Aurora may not necessarily guarantee the US with strongest computing power in the world in coming years.
China is also building its exascale supercomputers and their final versions are expected to come out in 2020 or 2021. ( Xi n hu a)
LOS ANGELES -NASA's Mars InSight lander has measured and recorded for the first time ever a likely "marsquake," a NASA release said Tuesday.
The faint seismic signal, detected by the lander's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, was recorded on April 6, the lander's 128th Martian day.
This is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind, according to NASA.
Scientists are still examining the data to determine the exact cause of the signal.
A video and audio clip was posted on the NASA website, illustrating the seismic event recorded by InSight's SEIS.
The instrument measured three distinct events -- Martian wind, marsquake, and the spacecraft's robotic arm as it moves to take pictures.
The audio was produced from two sets of sensors on the SEIS. According to the mission team, audio from both sets of sensors has been sped up by a factor of 60. The actual vibrations on Mars would not have been audible to the human ear.
"We've been collecting background noise up until now, but this first event officially kicks off a new field: Martian seismology," said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The new seismic event was too small to provide solid data on the Martian interior, which is one of InSight's main objectives, according to the mission team.
The Martian surface is extremely quiet, allowing SEIS to pick up faint rumbles. In contrast, Earth's surface is quivering constantly from seismic noise created by oceans and weather, according to NASA.
The SEIS, which InSight placed on the planet's surface on December 19 last year, will enable scientists to gather similar data about Mars. By studying the deep interior of Mars, they hope to learn how other rocky worlds, including Earth and the Moon, formed. ( Xi n hu a)