Blueback, a new supercomputer, is set to join the ranks of the fastest supercomputers in the world. Despite its smaller size compared to other supercomputers like El Capitan or Frontier, Blueback is still highly powerful, ranking 50th on the current Top500 list. Named after the USS Blueback, a US Navy submarine, the supercomputer is scheduled to be operational by 2024.
Christine Cuicchi, the director of the Navy DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, revealed that Blueback will replace three older Navy supercomputers. With a computing capacity of 17.7 PFlops, Blueback will be constructed at the Navy DSRC and operated by the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (CNMOC) at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
Blueback will be powered by AMD Epyc processors from the Genoa generation, totaling 256,512 cores. In a full configuration, it would include 2672 Epyc processors with 96 cores each. Additionally, the system will be supported by 128 MI300A accelerators, with up to 3072 Zen4 cores, 24 cores per APU. It is yet to be determined whether these accelerators will function as independent computing nodes or work in conjunction with Epyc processors.
HPE will supply the Blueback system, which belongs to the EX4000 series. The data connection will be facilitated by a Cray Slingshot 11 interconnect with a speed of 200 GBit/s. The supercomputer will possess 538 TB of main memory and a tiered storage system, including 2 PB of NVMe storage and a considerable amount of fixed storage in a Cray ClusterStor E1000 Lustre.
One notable feature of Blueback is the inclusion of AMD’s MI300A accelerator, which combines Zen 4 processor cores with CDNA3 accelerator cores. The MI300A allows for efficient access to up to 128 GB HBM3 memory, making it superior to the pure accelerator version MI300X, which has a memory size of only 128 GB. With 146 billion transistors, the MI300A has a 78 percent increase compared to the 128-core Bergamo Epyc CPUs. The MI300X accelerator version goes even further with 153 billion transistors.
Overall, Blueback represents AMD’s growing presence in the supercomputer market and its commitment to pushing the boundaries of computing power. With its impressive specifications and capabilities, Blueback promises to contribute significantly to naval research and advancements in various fields.
