Last year the US lost the Super Computing crown to China which was assisted by a US corporation.  Hating to be beat the US is not seeking to wion the crown back under a project being called Titan.

On the campus of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge Tennessee we have gotten word that “Titan” has been commissioned by the US Department of Energy.  The Supercomputer is expected to achieve speeds of 20 petaflops per second.

Titan is being built by Cray Computer and will be part of a fraternity some of the fastest computers in the world located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory site. ORNL already has the dubious distinction having Gaea, Kraken and the Jaguar super computers being on site. That said, plans are in the works for a new facility to be built within a year to house the first stage of the Titan; with phase two expected next year.

The Titan supercomputer will use XT3, 4 and 5 processor boxes and a “Gemini” XE interconnect.  We are also hearing Titan will have a 3D torus topology, rather than the usual array. The co-processor will be a GDU probably from Nvidia which supposedly helps the Titan perform calculations more quickly. Titan will be equipped with what is being described as “globally addressable memory,” which makes sure data is not slowed when it passes through I/O channels.  Titan will cost us a whopping $100 million and will be used by the US Department of Energy to examine complex energy systems.