Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee has announced plans, via X/Twitter, to retire its Summit supercomputer in November 2024. After six years of service and more than 200 million research node hours, Summit’s decommissioning marks the end of the road for what was, in 2018, the most powerful supercomputer in the world.
Summit’s infrastructure includes 9,216 IBM Power 9 processors and 27,648 Nvidia Volta GPUs. With a peak performance of 148.6 petaflops, it has since been surpassed by newer technologies and is now ranked ninth globally.
Its successor, Frontier, has already claimed the title of the world's first exascale supercomputer, far surpassing Summit's computing power. Although it currently holds the top spot in the global rankings, Frontier faces stiff competition from several rivals, including Oracle and Elon Musk's xAI.
Goodbye, Summit! Attendees gathered on the final day of the OLCF 2024 User Meeting to sign a snippet of @ORNL's Summit #supercomputer. After nearly 6 years of providing over 200M node hours to researchers around the world, Summit will be decommissioned in November. pic.twitter.com/7bnsPy6bwxSeptember 11, 2024
Is it not for sale?
Summit’s retirement, originally planned for early 2024, was extended to support additional scientific initiatives. During her final year, she played a key role in more than 100 research projects, including contributions to the National AI Research Resources Initiative.
ORNL has not confirmed whether it would consider selling Summit, but for those with the financial resources, acquiring the supercomputer could be an attractive opportunity. There is certainly precedent for selling such systems. The Cheyenne supercomputer, previously housed at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer Center (NWSC) in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was ranked the 20th most powerful computer in the world in 2016. It was sold through the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) in May 2024. Despite maintenance issues and significant operating costs (thousands of dollars per day), Cheyenne attracted 27 bidders and ultimately sold for $480,085, plus decommissioning and relocation costs. Summit, however, would likely come with a much higher price tag.
The supercomputing landscape has evolved greatly since Summit’s debut, especially with the rise of AI-powered data centers. This shift has increased the demand for energy resources: data center electricity consumption is projected to reach 6.8% of total U.S. energy generation by 2030, up from 4% today.
Frontier is the world’s fastest and most energy-efficient supercomputer, but ORNL believes it can do better. Looking ahead, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is already planning a successor to Frontier, called Discovery, which is set to debut in 2028.
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