Cray wins contract for supercomputer to simulate nuke tests

Supercomputers are used in a number of programs within the government in the US. One of the big names in supercomputing is Cray and the company has recently won a contract with the US government for a new supercomputer worth $174 million. This supercomputer will be supplied to the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Cray will provide a Cray XC supercomputer that will be connected to the Cray Sonexion storage system and dubbed Trinity. Trinity will have over eight times the power of the Cray EX6 supercomputer called Cielo currently in use at the facility.

Trinity will be installed at Los Alamos and will use Intel Haswell processors along with upcoming Knights Landing Xeon Phi processors. It will start with 82PB of storage and has a throughput of 1.7TB per second. The machine will be used for simulating nuclear weapon performance among other things.