The most powerful supercomputer to date has been put into operation at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. The computer, named “Perlmutter,” is the size of an entire room and can perform four trillion floating-point operations per second. Among other things, this recnen performance will be used in the near future to produce a detailed map of the known universe, which was previously impossible due to the power required.
To create this mapAI supercomputer Perlmutter (source: Nvidia) will use a so-called Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to capture light from 35 million galaxies and 2.4 million quasars. The supercomputer will use this data to create the 3D map of the universe by analyzing nearly 5 million photos.
The goal of the endeavor is for researchers to understand how so-called dark energy works and whether it really is responsible for the expansion of the universe. In the future, the supercomputer should also reach other previously unknown components and make them comprehensible.
