Investigating stockpile stewardship applications for world’s largest computer chip

Sandia National Laboratories and its partners announced a new project today to investigate the application of Cerebras Systems‘ Wafer-Scale Engine technology to accelerate advanced simulation and computing applications in support of the nation’s stockpile stewardship mission. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing program is sponsoring the work and Sandia, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national labs will collaborate with Cerebras Systems on the project.

“The goal of NNSA’s Advanced Memory Technology research and development program is to develop technologies for use in future computing system procurements,” said ASC program director Thuc Hoang. “We are funding research in technologies that have the potential to deliver 40 times the application performance of our forthcoming NNSA exascale systems.”

“The Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine, currently the largest computer chip in the world, was built specifically for artificial intelligence and machine learning work,” said Andrew Feldman, founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. “The engine contains 2.6 trillion transistors, 850,000 artificial intelligence cores and powers the Cerebras CS-2, the industry’s fastest artificial intelligence computer,” he said.

Simon Hammond, federal program manager for the ASC’s Computational Systems and Software Environments program, said, “This collaboration with Cerebras Systems has great potential to impact future mission applications by enabling artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, which are an emerging component of our production simulation workloads.”

The new contract is part of NNSA’s post-Exascale-Computing-Initiative investment portfolio, which has the objective of sustaining the technology research and development momentum, and strong engagement with industry that the initiative had started via its PathForward program. It aims to foster a more robust domestic high-performance computing ecosystem by increasing U.S. industry competitiveness in next-generation high-performance computing technologies.

“We anticipate technologies developed as part of the program will be tested on the Advanced Simulation and Computing program’s advanced architecture prototype systems and will eventually affect the production of advanced and commodity technology platforms used by the three labs,” said Robert Hoekstra, senior manager of the extreme scale computing group at Sandia.

“Cerebras is excited to collaborate with the pioneering researchers and scientists at Sandia, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories,” he said. “Cerebras exists to enable researchers and scientists to push the boundaries of current knowledge, helping them solve problems that are intractable on existing computer infrastructure, as well as vastly accelerate cutting-edge simulation workloads. Our multiyear partnership with the Advanced Simulation and Computing program will expand the boundaries of the application of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing to physics across a range of important applications.”

James H. Laros III, Sandia project lead and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, said he is looking forward to the collaboration. “The technology holds great potential for impacting how we accomplish our mission in the future.”

About the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Established by Congress in 2000, NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the U.S. Navy with safe and militarily effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad.

About Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525.

About Cerebras Systems

Cerebras Systems is a team of pioneering computer architects, computer scientists, deep learning researchers, and engineers of all types who have come together to build a new class of computer system. That system is designed for the singular purpose of accelerating AI and changing the future of AI work forever, enabling customers to accelerate their deep learning work by orders of magnitude.

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