The US government plans to put a new supercomputer, Discovery, into operation by 2027 or 2028, which will offer three to five times more computing power than the current champion, Frontier.

The US Department of Energy has published a tender for the construction of a new supercomputer. A name has already been found, Discovery, and now there are companies that will build the machine. The supercomputer should be ready for use by 2027 or early 2028 at the latest.

8.5 exaflops

The most powerful supercomputer is already in the United States. Frontier at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee tops the top 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers and was the first supercomputer to break the exascale barrier. Discovery is expected to be three to five times more powerful with a targeted computing capacity of 8.5 exaflops.

Frontier was put together by HPE Cray with AMD as the main supplier. There is no guarantee that these parties will also be entrusted with the discovery. Anyone who believes they can build the supercomputer has until August 30 to submit a proposal. Intel would love to dethrone AMD from the exascale throne, but so far it has failed.

Research

The U.S. government doesn’t just see Discovery as a showcase for the rest of the world. Discovery will support scientific research in several areas, including AI, climate change, drug development, nuclear safety and green energy solutions.

Supercomputers like Frontier and Discovery currently show more potential to solve practical problems than quantum computers, although quantum theoretically offers more computing power and higher efficiency. What is the state of quantum technology? We will look at this in more detail in this article.