Intel breaking new ground with new supercomputer

Intel’s new supercomputer, Aurora, is expected to be the first in the world to achieve a peak performance of 2 exaflops.

The Aurora is made up of 10,624 compute blades, boasting 63,744 Intel Max Series GPUs, which is more GPUs than any other system in the world, as well as 21,248 Intel Xeon Max CPUs across 166 racks.

The machine has been developed by a team led by Olivier Franza, who helped oversee the pivot in the design of Aurora to a GPU-based machine. He became the project’s Chief Architect in 2021.

The design of the Aurora has helped inform the Intel-wide strategy and product portfolio. Franza said changes to the Intel product roadmap, including the end of the Xeon Phi and Omnipath product families, required a restart to the program.

“We infused all the Aurora system-level requirements down to the components’ level,” he said. “Intel ended up architecting a completely new storage concept, DAOS (distributed asynchronous object storage). Aurora will be among the first systems to use it, and by far the largest.”

The build phase for the supercomputer has now been complete, and the system is now in the testing, stabilisation and validation stages.

Franza said Aurora has significant applications in the field of advanced research, being capable of some of the most complex scientific and engineering problems in the world. For example, the machine has enormous potential in cancer research, Franza said. “I think that’s something that is going to make us very proud,” he said.

The supercomputer also has applications in the emerging field of generative AI, Franza added.

“It will enable one of the biggest large language models planned to date, the 1 trillion parameter Aurora GenAI project, enhancing, enabling and easing the lives of scientists,” he said.

While the project has been a lot of work, it has been a team effort and a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Franza said.

“It’s an extended effort, and it requires a lot of perseverance,” he said. “The core team has maintained a marathon mentality where it’s not over until it’s over. We needed the kind of people that can effectively focus for a long time on something immensely challenging. And in the end, the accomplishment is something that very few can say they have achieved.”

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