Big Data: Next-Generation Machines for Big Science

Addressing the scientific grand challenges identified by the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science's programs alone demands a total leadership-class computing capability of 150 to 400 Pflops by the end of this decade. The successors to three of the DOE's most powerful leadership-class machines are set to arrive in 2017 and 2018-the products of the Collaboration Oak Ridge Argonne Livermore (CORAL) initiative, a national laboratory-industry design/build approach to engineering next-generation petascale computers for grand challenge science. These mission-critical machines will enable discoveries in key scientific fields such as energy, biotechnology, nanotechnology, materials science, and high-performance computing, and serve as a milestone on the path to deploying exascale computing capabilities.