AI Gets A Boost Via LLNL, SambaNova Collaboration - Liwaiwai

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has installed a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator from SambaNova Systems, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced today, allowing researchers to more effectively combine AI and machine learning (ML) with complex scientific workloads. LLNL has begun integrating the new AI hardware, SambaNova Systems DataScale, into the NNSA's Corona supercomputing cluster, an 11-plus petaFLOP machine that Lab scientists are using to conduct fusion energy research for stockpile stewardship applications, find therapeutics for COVID-19 and perform other unclassified basic science work. Lab researchers said the upgrade will allow them to run scientific simulations on the Corona system while offloading AI calculations from those simulations to the SambaNova DataScale system, improving overall speed, performance and productivity. "This integration enables low-latency communication between the two devices allowing them to operate in tandem with greater overall efficiency," said LLNL computer scientist Ian Karlin, who heads the SambaNova project. "In addition, scientific simulations running on Corona will feed data as they run into the SambaNova DataScale system to train new machine learning models based on their results."