Building a Supercomputer During a Pandemic

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We're actually powered from separate substations here. So if one goes down, we still get power to the computer, to the mechanical plants. Front here has 60 million individual parts in it. You know that balls down to hundreds of individual part numbers. And the supply chain issues were across the board. We jokingly say one of our biggest lessons learned is don't build a supercomputer during a pandemic.

Last May, the Oak Ridge National Lab, run by the US Department of Energy, unveiled Frontier–the world's fastest supercomputer. It’s capable of performing a quintillion calculations per second, breaking what's called the exascale barrier.

The system requires its own power plant, 6,000 gallons of water to keep it cool, and a highly trained staff to operate. So what can it do? And who gets to use it?

We set out for Knoxville, Tennessee to try to wrap our brains around Frontier’s limitless potential.

See more about Frontier here: It Takes 6,000 Gallons of Water to Cool the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

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