Frontier (supercomputer)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Frontier, or OLCF-5, is the

world's first and fastest exascale supercomputer, hosted at the Oak Frontier
Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in Tennessee,
United States and first operational in 2022. It is based on the Cray
EX and is the successor to Summit (OLCF-4). As of November
2023, Frontier is the world's fastest supercomputer. Frontier
achieved an Rmax of 1.102 exaFLOPS, which is 1.102 quintillion
operations per second, using AMD CPUs and GPUs.[2][3][4][5][6]

Measured at 62.86 gigaflops/watt, Frontier topped the Green500

list for most efficient supercomputer,[6] until it was dethroned, in
efficiency, by Flatiron Institute's Henri supercomputer in
Active Deployment: Sep.
November 2022.[7]
2021

Design Completion: May 2022

Operators Oak Ridge National
Frontier uses 9,472 AMD Epyc 7453s "Trento" 64 core 2 GHz Laboratory and U.S.
CPUs (606,208 cores) and 37,888 Radeon Instinct MI250X GPUs Department of Energy
(8,335,360 cores). They can perform double precision operations
Location Oak Ridge Leadership
at the same speed as single precision.[8]
Computing Facility
"Trento" is an optimized 3rd Gen EPYC CPU[9] ("Milan"), which Power 21 MW
is based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. Operating HPE Cray OS
system
It occupies 74 19-inch (48 cm) rack cabinets.[10] Each cabinet
hosts 64 blades, each consisting of 2 nodes. Space 680 m2 (7,300 sq ft)
Speed 1.194 exaFLOPS
Blades are interconnected by HPE Slingshot 64-port switch that
(Rmax) /
provides 12.8 terabits/second of bandwidth. Groups of blades are
linked in a dragonfly topology with at most three hops between 1.67982 exaFLOPS
any two nodes. Cabling is either optical or copper, customized to (Rpeak)[1]
minimize cable length. Total cabling runs 145 km (90 mi). Frontier Cost US$600 million
is liquid-cooled, allowing 5x the density of air-cooled (estimated cost)
architectures.[8]
Purpose Scientific research and
Each node consists of one CPU, 4 GPUs and 4 terabytes of flash development
memory. Each GPU has 128 GB of RAM soldered onto it.[8] Website www.olcf.ornl.gov
/frontier/ (https://www.
Frontier has coherent interconnects between CPUs and GPUs,
olcf.ornl.gov/frontier/)
allowing GPU memory to be accessed coherently by code running
on the Epyc CPUs.[11]

Frontier uses an internal 75 TB/s read / 35 TB/s write / 15 billion IOPS flash storage system, along with the
700 PB Orion site-wide Lustre filesystem.[12]
Frontier consumes 21 megawatts (MW), compared to its predecessor Summit's 13 MW. It has been
estimated that the next US exascale system, Aurora, will consume around 60 MW.[13]

History
The original design envisioned hundreds of thousands of GPUs and 150–500 MW of power.[8] Oak Ridge
partnered with HPE Cray and AMD to build the system.

The machine was built at a cost of US$600 million. It began deployment in 2021[14] and reached full
capability in 2022.[15] It clocked 1.1 exaflops Rmax in May 2022, making it the world's fastest
supercomputer as measured in the June 2022 edition of the TOP500 list, replacing Fugaku.[1][16]

Upon its release, the supercomputer topped the Green500 list for most efficient supercomputer, measured at
62.68 gigaflops/watt.[6] ORNL Director Thomas Zacharia said: "Frontier is ushering in a new era of
exascale computing to solve the world’s biggest scientific challenges." He added: "This milestone offers
just a preview of Frontier’s unmatched capability as a tool for scientific discovery. It is the result of more
than a decade of collaboration among the national laboratories, academia and private industry, including
DOE's Exascale Computing Project, which is deploying the applications, software technologies, hardware
and integration necessary to ensure impact at the exascale."[12]

References
1. "TOP500 June 2023" (https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2023/06/). May 22, 2023.
Retrieved May 26, 2023.
2. Wells, Jack (March 19, 2018). "Powering the Road to National HPC Leadership" (https://ww
w.youtube.com/watch?v=9tmWN9PR-ZU&t=2h24m41s). OpenPOWER Summit 2018.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20200804004021/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
9tmWN9PR-ZU&t=2h24m41s) from the original on August 4, 2020. Retrieved March 25,
2018.
3. Bethea, Katie (February 13, 2018). "Frontier: OLCF'S Exascale Future – Oak Ridge
Leadership Computing Facility" (https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2018/02/13/frontier-olcfs-exascale
-future/). Oak Ridge National Laboratory - Leadership Computing Facility. Archived (https://w
eb.archive.org/web/20180310203823/https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2018/02/13/frontier-olcfs-exa
scale-future/) from the original on March 10, 2018.
4. "DOE Under Secretary for Science Dabbar's Exascale Update" (https://insidehpc.com/2020/
10/doe-under-secretary-for-science-dabbars-exascale-update-frontier-to-be-first-aurora-to-be
-monitored/). insideHPC. October 9, 2020. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/202010280
93045/https://insidehpc.com/2020/10/doe-under-secretary-for-science-dabbars-exascale-up
date-frontier-to-be-first-aurora-to-be-monitored/) from the original on October 28, 2020.
5. Don Clark (May 30, 2022). "U.S. Retakes Top Spot in Supercomputer Race" (https://www.nyt
imes.com/2022/05/30/business/us-supercomputer-frontier.html). The New York Times.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20220601230913/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/3
0/business/us-supercomputer-frontier.html) from the original on June 1, 2022. Retrieved
June 1, 2022.
6. Larabel, Michael (May 30, 2022). "AMD-Powered Frontier Supercomputer Tops Top500 At
1.1 Exaflops, Tops Green500 Too" (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&p
x=Top500-Green500-Frontier). Phoronix. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2022060606
4113/https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Top500-Green500-Frontie
r) from the original on June 6, 2022. Retrieved June 1, 2022.
 7. Anton Shilov (November 15, 2022). "Nvidia Steals AMD's Supercomputer Efficiency World
Record" (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-steals-amds-supercomputer-efficiency
-world-record). Tom's Hardware. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20230206145249/htt
ps://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-steals-amds-supercomputer-efficiency-world-recor
d) from the original on February 6, 2023. Retrieved December 10, 2022.
8. Choi, Charles Q. (June 24, 2022). "The Beating Heart of the World's First Exascale
Supercomputer" (https://spectrum.ieee.org/frontier-exascale-supercomputer). IEEE
Spectrum. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20220814035711/https://spectrum.ieee.org/
frontier-exascale-supercomputer) from the original on August 14, 2022. Retrieved August 14,
2022.
9. "Crusher Quick-Start Guide — OLCF User Documentation" (https://docs.olcf.ornl.gov/system
s/crusher_quick_start_guide.html). docs.olcf.ornl.gov. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/
20221108174555/https://docs.olcf.ornl.gov/systems/crusher_quick_start_guide.html) from
the original on November 8, 2022. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
10. "FRONTIER Spec Sheet" (https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2022/05/he
wlett-packard-enterprise-ushers-in-new-era-with-worlds-first-and-fastest-exascale-supercom
puter-frontier-for-the-us-department-of-energys-oak-ridge-national-laboratory.html). Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20220531071934/https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-
release/2022/05/hewlett-packard-enterprise-ushers-in-new-era-with-worlds-first-and-fastest-
exascale-supercomputer-frontier-for-the-us-department-of-energys-oak-ridge-national-labora
tory.html) from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2022.
11. "AMD Preparing More Linux Code For The Frontier Supercomputer" (https://www.phoronix.c
om/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-VMA-Changes-Frontier). Archived (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20210528004223/https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=
AMD-VMA-Changes-Frontier) from the original on May 28, 2021.
12. "Frontier supercomputer debuts as world's fastest, breaking exascale barrier" (https://www.or
nl.gov/news/frontier-supercomputer-debuts-worlds-fastest-breaking-exascale-barrier). Oak
Ridge National Laboratory. May 30, 2022. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/202206011
92559/https://www.ornl.gov/news/frontier-supercomputer-debuts-worlds-fastest-breaking-exa
scale-barrier) from the original on June 1, 2022. Retrieved June 17, 2022.
13. "How Argonne Is Preparing for Exascale in 2022" (https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/09/08/how
-argonne-is-preparing-for-exascale-in-2022/). HPCwire. September 8, 2021. Archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20220605014816/https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/09/08/how-argonn
e-is-preparing-for-exascale-in-2022/) from the original on June 5, 2022. Retrieved June 14,
2022.
14. "US Closes in on Exascale: Frontier Installation Is Underway" (https://www.hpcwire.com/202
1/09/29/us-closes-in-on-exascale-frontier-installation-is-underway/). HPC Wire. September
29, 2021. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20220103132100/https://www.hpcwire.com/
2021/09/29/us-closes-in-on-exascale-frontier-installation-is-underway/) from the original on
January 3, 2022. Retrieved January 3, 2022.
15. "First Look At Oak Ridge's "Frontier" Exascaler, Contrasted To Argonne's "Aurora" " (https://
www.nextplatform.com/2021/10/04/first-look-at-oak-ridges-frontier-exascaler-contrasted-to-ar
gonnes-aurora/). Next Platform. October 4, 2021. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2022
0103132052/https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/10/04/first-look-at-oak-ridges-frontier-exasc
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January 3, 2022.
16. "US Takes Supercomputer Top Spot with First True Exascale Machine" (https://www.pcmag.
com/news/us-takes-supercomputer-top-spot-with-first-true-exascale-machine?utm_source=e
mail&utm_campaign=whatsnewnow&utm_medium=title). Archived (https://web.archive.org/
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first-true-exascale-machine?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=whatsnewnow&utm_mediu
m=title) from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2022.

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