Cray Reinvents Itself Again and Will Build a Second DOE Exascale System

This Quick Take looks at the recent announcement by the Department of Energy (DOE) of the release of a Request for Proposal (RFP) for exascale systems to be installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the 2021-2022 time frame. The RFP also says that a third system (different from the ORNL computer) may be installed at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in 2022.

This Quick Take looks at the growing availability of commercial cloud-based quantum computing (QC), supported through either direct access to true QC systems or QC simulators based on traditional digital hardware. In addition to QC hardware, most cloud-based QC providers are also rolling out their own software development environments to help existing and new QC software developers more effectively explore QC programming. The choice of options for potential QC users is growing, and each of the QC providers offers a distinct take on QC architecture and programming.