In November, Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy, announced that Titan, a new supercomputer located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was named the world’s most powerful according to the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Titan, a Cray XK7, achieved a speed of 17.59 petaflops (quadrillion calculations per second) on the Linpack benchmark test.

Scientists will use Titan’s computing power for a wide range of research. This includes enabling further improvements in climate science and continuing the drive toward cloud-resolving climate models; developing the next generation of materials used to manufacture U.S. goods; modeling the behavior of neutrons in a nuclear power reactor; and modeling the combustion of fuels in an internal combustion engine to improve engines for cars and trucks.

DOE is deploying advanced architectures, like Titan, at their Leadership Computing Facilities. Access to these machines for DOE researchers, their collaborators, and the broader climate science community is available through proposal-based processes.
See http://science.energy.gov/ascr/facilities/