Crunching numbers to check the design and reliability of nuclear weapons is the main job of BlueGene/L and ASC Purple, but the two supercomputers in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s new Terascale Simulation Facility are also available roughly 12% of the time for nonclassified research.
“The new machines are creating simulations at unprecedented detail and speed,” says Dona Crawford, LLNL associate director for computation. BlueGene/L, which for the last year has held the record as the world’s most powerful computer, and ASC Purple are used for different aspects of the US Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program. “Had we attempted to procure a single computer capable of solving all our computational problems rather than utilizing two machines, the cost would have been double the $200 million we spent,” Crawford says.
ASC Purple can simulate, in three dimensions and in a single data run, both the primary fission explosion and...
