Theta, a new production supercomputer located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is officially open to the research community. The new machine’s massively parallel, many-core architecture continues Argonne’s leadership computing program towards its future Aurora system.

Theta was built onsite at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, where it will operate alongside Mira, an IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. Both machines are fully dedicated to supporting a wide range of scientific and engineering research campaigns. Theta, an Intel-Cray system, entered production on July 1.

The new supercomputer will immediately begin supporting several 2017-2018 DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) projects. The ALCC is a major allocation program that supports scientists from industry, academia, and national laboratories working on advancements in targeted DOE mission areas. Theta will also support projects from the ALCF Data Science Program, ALCF’s discretionary award program, and, eventually, the DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computing Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program—the major means by which the scientific community gains access to the DOE’s fastest supercomputers dedicated to open science.

Designed in collaboration with Intel and Cray, Theta is a 9.65-petaflops system based on the second-generation Intel Xeon Phi processor and Cray’s high-performance computing software stack. Capable of nearly 10 quadrillion calculations per second, Theta will enable researchers to break new ground in scientific investigations that range from modeling the inner workings of the brain to developing new materials for renewable energy applications.

“Theta’s unique architectural features represent a new and exciting era in simulation science capabilities,” said ALCF Director of Science Katherine Riley. “These same capabilities will also support data-driven and machine-learning problems, which are increasingly becoming significant drivers of large-scale scientific computing.”

Now that Theta is available as a production resource, researchers can apply for computing time through the facility’s various allocation programs. Although the INCITE and ALCC calls for proposals recently closed, researchers can apply for Director’s Discretionary awards at any time.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit the Office of Science website.