$200M Supercomputer To Be Decommissioned Within Weeks — ORNL’s Summit Could Be A Bargain For Someone With Very Deep Pockets, High Ambitions (And A Decent Amount Of Real Estate To Park It All)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee has announced via X/Twitter that it plans to retire its Summit supercomputer in November 2024. After six years of service and more than 200 million node hours of research, Summit’s retirement will mark the end of what was the world’s most powerful supercomputer in 2018.
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 now ranks ninth globally.
Its successor, Frontier, has already claimed the title of the world’s first exascale supercomputer, significantly surpassing Summit’s computing power. While it currently holds the world’s number one spot, Frontier itself faces stiff competition from a number of challengers, including Oracle and Elon Musk’s xAI.
Goodbye, Summit! Attendees gathered on the final day of the 2024 OLCF User Meeting to sign a piece of @ORNL’s Summit #supercomputer. After nearly 6 years of delivering over 200M node hours to researchers around the world, Summit will be shutting down in November. pic.twitter.com/7bnsPy6bwxSeptember 11, 2024
Not for sale?
Summit was originally scheduled to retire in 2024, but its lifespan was extended to support additional scientific initiatives. In its last year, it played a key role in more than 100 research projects, including contributions to the National AI Research Resource 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 proposition. There is certainly precedent for selling such systems. The Cheyenne supercomputer, formerly housed at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) in Cheyenne, Wyoming, was ranked the 20th most powerful computer in the world in 2016. It was put up for sale in May 2024 through the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). Despite maintenance issues and significant operating costs—thousands of dollars per day—Cheyenne attracted 27 bidders and ultimately sold for $480,085, plus the cost of disassembly and relocation. Summit, however, would likely carry a much higher price tag.
The supercomputing landscape has evolved dramatically since Summit’s debut, particularly with the rise of AI-driven data centers. This shift has increased demand for energy resources, with data center electricity consumption expected to reach 6.8% of total U.S. electricity generation by 2030, up from 4% today.
Frontier is both the fastest and most power-efficient supercomputer in the world, but ORNL thinks it can do better. Looking ahead, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) is already planning Frontier’s successor, called Discovery, which is expected to debut in 2028.
