This baby will do 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second!

Cray Inc. – the supercomputer firm whose roots go back to legendary Chippewa Falls native Seymour Cray Jr., and which just announced it was being acquired by Hewlett Packard for $1.3 billion – has signed a $600 million contract with the U.S. Department of Energy to create the world’s fastest supercomputer. Cray Inc. will build the Frontier supercomputer for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where it will be used to push for scientific breakthroughs in fields as diverse as materials science, biology, energy, manufacturing, health data science, and national security. According to a Oak Ridge press release, the machine – which is slated for delivery in 2021 – will be as much as 50 times faster than today’s fastest supercomputer. The so-called exascale computer will be able to exceed one quintillion calculations per second – that’s 10 to the power of 18, or a 1 followed by 18 zeroes! Cray Inc. is based in Seattle and has facilities in Chippewa Falls.