A collaboration between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory resulted in shattering supercomputer simulation speed records. The record-breaking Sequoia Supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore was used in the experiment that set the record for supercomputer simulation speed at 504 billion events per second, shattered the previous record of 12.4 billion events per second.
An "event" is a measure of supercomputer performance while running simulations. What an event corresponds to depends what type of model is running. An event could be defined as an individual financial transaction if running an economic model, or the movement of one car if running a traffic model.
The record-breaking performance was conducted using software developed by RPI, known as ROSS, or Rensselaer Optimistic Simulation System. The software for Sequoia was tested on RPI's own supercomputer, and then deployed on Sequoia. The record-breaking performance was achieved using a benchmark simulation used to test and rank other supercomputers.
Sequoia, developed by IBM and deployed in 2012, was at one point ranked the fastest supercomputer in the world. It has since fallen to the rank of second fastest supercomputer, the current fastest being Oak Ridge National Lab's Titan supercomputer.
In prior months, Sequoia was used to study the interaction between high strength lasers and dense plasma as a proposed method for developing fusion energy, the same energy source that powers the sun that could one day be used as an alternative energy source. The simulation used all of the supercomputer's power, which is roughly equivalent to 1 million average desktop computers.
Three-dimensional simulations of the human heart were also conducted on Sequoia, through a partnership between Lawrence Livermore and IBM. The collaboration, called the Cardioid Cardiac Modeling Project, involved researchers simulating how electrical signals move through the human heart. The simulations will enable the testing of drugs and medical devices using computer models before testing on humans.
Sequoia will ultimately be used to run simulations to test nuclear weapons currently in stockpile. The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency responsible for the upkeep of the nuclear stockpile, will conduct the simulations.
Simulations will be used by the National Nuclear Security Administration in place of actual underground nuclear tests, which are conducted to assess the condition and extend the life of the currently existing and aging stockpile of nuclear weapons.
In 2012, Sequoia won a Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award for being one of the top technology innovations of 2012.