US Supercomputer 'Sierra' Retired After Seven Years of Atomic Simulations
The 'Sierra' supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which simulated the US nuclear arsenal for seven years, has been permanently shut down. Despite being among the top 25 supercomputers globally, it completed its last tasks in October 2023. 'Sierra' utilized thousands of IBM Power9 CPUs and Nvidia Volta GPUs to verify the safety and functionality of nuclear warheads without conducting real tests.

'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.




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