Nvidia Polaris Supercomputer Deal Said to Be Neared by US as It Waits for Delayed Intel Machine

 Nvidia Polaris Supercomputer Deal Said to Be Neared by US as It Waits for Delayed Intel Machine

The Nvidia and AMD machine, to be called Polaris, will not be a replacement for the Intel-based Aurora machine.

Intel, AMD, and Nvidia are battling for market share for chips used in data centres

HIGHLIGHTS

• Polaris will come online this year
• Polaris machine at Argonne will not be as powerful as the Intel machine
• Polaris computer will be able to make some exaflop calculations

The US Department of Energy is nearing a deal to purchase a supercomputer made with chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices as a key lab waits for a larger supercomputer from Intel that has been delayed for months, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Nvidia and AMD machine, to be called Polaris, will not be a replacement for the Intel-based Aurora machine slated for the Argonne National Lab near Chicago, which was poised to be the nation's fastest computer when announced in 2019.

Instead, Polaris, which will come online this year, will be a test machine for Argonne to start readying its software for the Intel machine, the people familiar with the matter said.