Metis — a little bit of Titan

Buddy Bland, director of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, explains Metis to me during a visit to ORNL earlier this spring. Metis is a two-cabinet Cray XK7 system that’s used by lab researchers to develop codes for Titan — a 200-cabinet version that is the nation’s fastest computer. Metis was placed in what’s called CADES (Compute and Data Environment for Science), which provides support capabilities for scientists using the stable of supercomputers for research projects. Something similar to Metis will reportedly be delivered to Oak Ridge in advance of Summit, an IBM supercomputer that’s under development and expected to be the next big thing, with capabilities in the range of 150 to 300 petaflops. (KNS photo/Michael Patrick)