Intel Crosses Milestone As ‘Borealis’ Test System For Full Scale Argonne Aurora Exascale Super Computer Is Now Live

Intel recently announced that the test system for the exascale Aurora deployment at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois is finally live. The test system will be used to run system performance evaluations, stress-tests and debug the tech and architecture before the full-scale deployment goes live.

Aurora will feature around 10,000 server blades, each featuring 2x 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (which we know as Sapphire Rapids) and 6x Intel Data Center GPU Max Series (which we know as Ponte Vecchio) chips. The Intel Borealis test system (also based out of Argonne) will feature just 128 server blades although in an identical configuration and scalable setting as its larger variant.

Intel also dropped a  video walk though of the Borealis test system which you can watch over here. At launch, Aurora is expected to be one of the few exascale deployments and one of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

HPCWire also managed to get additional details about the Borealis test system. The node has 8x HPE Slingshot 11 NICs and the topology is Dragonfly. Intel goes into more detail explaining how Borealis will be crucial to a stable launch of the Aurora system (as it incorporates a lot of new tech from Intel) and this will allow them to test not only the hardware stack but the software stack as well. Since test beds must use the final hardware, this means that Aurora should almost certainly be completed before the end of this year. Intel's response to HPCWire's question about the importance of Borealis can be seen below:

Wisniewski: The value Borealis brings is to let us do as much of the debug and integration work early on, so that when we scale the system at Argonne, we’ve already tested the smaller-scale functional capability. Because we are using the machine and software stack now, it allows us to confirm that all the pieces of the complex software stack can be built, integrated, installed and executed well ahead of when we get to the critical and challenging work of installing and scaling the hardware. Having as much of that behind us will let us focus on the issues that only show up as you scale the system.

Intel engineers are currently working with scientists and technicians at the Argonne National Laboratory to conduct early pilot studies of drug discovery and quantum science (you can't really test Aurora without running real life workloads). Reaching a size of 2 basketball courts and 600 tons and a rated peak performance of 2 EXAFLOPs, this will likely be one of the first exascale supercomputers in the US and one of the fastest in the entire world.