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US Supercomputer 'Sierra' Retired After Seven Years of Atomic Simulations

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'Sierra', the US supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, was officially retired after seven years of simulating the US nuclear arsenal. It was used to assess the reliability of warheads without real nuclear tests.

In October 2023, 'Sierra' completed its final assignments before shutdown, despite remaining one of the top 25 supercomputers. The machine combined 4,284 compute nodes with IBM Power9 CPUs and Nvidia Volta GPUs, achieving approximately 125 petaflops of peak performance. The retirement process involved secure data destruction to prevent leaks, while some hardware components may be recycled for other systems.

US Supercomputer 'Sierra' Retired After Seven Years of Atomic Simulations
Mar 1, 2026, 12:18 PM

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