The Challenges of Running on a Machine-Like Frontier

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We're about to submit the paper showing this predictive model that is very good at picking out these little black dots at the top or when food shortages are occurring. So we can start to get up to a year warning when one of these pandemic breakouts could be occurring and then zoom in on where and when to look. And as we also learned, they're already building the next one. Vic, Catherine, next time you go on a field trip, I'm going with you.

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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