Editing ASCI White

{{short description|Former supercomputer in the United States}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2014}}
{{More citations needed|date=May 2014}}
'''ASCI White''' was a [[supercomputer]] at the [[Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]] in [[California]], which was briefly the fastest supercomputer in the world.<ref>{{cite web |title=No. 1 system from November 2000 to November 2001 |url=https://www.top500.org/resources/top-systems/asci-white-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory/ |publisher=top500.org |accessdate=22 May 2019}}</ref>

[[File:ASCIWhite01.jpg|thumb|Fisheye view of ASCI White]]

It was a [[computer cluster]] based on [[IBM]]'s commercial [[IBM RS/6000 SP]] computer. 512 nodes were interconnected for ASCI White, with each node containing sixteen 375{{nbsp}}MHz IBM [[POWER3|POWER3-II]] [[Microprocessor|processor]]s. In total, the ASCI White had 8,192 processors, 6{{nbsp}}[[terabyte]]s (TB) of memory, and 160{{nbsp}}TB of disk storage. It was almost exclusively used for large-scale computations requiring dozens, hundreds, or thousands of processors. The computer weighed 106{{nbsp}}tons and consumed 3{{nbsp}}MW of electricity with a further 3{{nbsp}}MW needed for cooling. It had a theoretical processing speed of 12.3{{nbsp}}[[Flops|teraFLOPS]] (TFLOPS). A single modern{{When|date=November 2023}} 4U rackmount server could match these specifications while weighing under 50&nbsp;kg and consuming under 2&nbsp;kW of power. The system ran IBM's [[IBM AIX|AIX]] operating system.

ASCI White was made up of three individual systems, the 512-node White, the 28-node Ice and the 68-node Frost.

The system was built in [[Poughkeepsie, New York]]. Completed in June 2000 it was transported to specially built facilities in California and officially dedicated on August 15, 2001.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://computation.llnl.gov/casc/sc2001_fliers/ASCI_White/ASCI_White01.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141111101755/http://computation.llnl.gov/casc/sc2001_fliers/ASCI_White/ASCI_White01.html|url-status=dead|title=The World's Fastest Computer - Meeting the Challenge of Stockpile Stewardship|archivedate=November 11, 2014}}</ref> Its peak performance of 12.3{{nbsp}}TFLOPS was not achieved in the widely accepted [[LINPACK]] tests. The system cost US$110 million (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US|110|2000}}&nbsp;million in {{Inflation/year|US}}).

It was built as stage three of the [[Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative]] (ASCI) started by the U.S. [[United States Department of Energy|Department of Energy]] and the [[National Nuclear Security Administration]] to build a simulator to replace live [[nuclear weapon]]s testing following the moratorium imposed by the [[Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty]] started by [[President of the United States|President]] [[George H. W. Bush]] in 1992 and extended by [[Bill Clinton]] in 1993.

The machine was decommissioned on July 27, 2006. {{Citation needed|date=January 2024}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

{{S-start}}
{{S-ach|rec}}
{{S-bef|before=[[ASCI Red]]<br />2.379 teraflops}}
{{S-ttl
 | title = [[TOP500|World's most powerful supercomputer]]
 | years = November 2000&nbsp;– November 2001
}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Earth Simulator|NEC Earth Simulator]]<br />35.86 teraflops}}
{{S-end}}
{{Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory|state=autocollapse}}

[[Category:Cluster computing]]
[[Category:Nuclear stockpile stewardship]]
[[Category:Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]]
[[Category:IBM supercomputers]]
[[Category:64-bit computers]]


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