Matthew Nelson
Penguin Computing and AMD have entered into an agreement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to update a supercomputer in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nextgov reported Friday.
Penguin Computer will integrate the Tundra Extreme Scale system while AMD will install EPYC CPUs and Radeon Instinct MI50 accelerators into the Corona supercomputer to help it reach a performance rate of 4.5 petaflops.
The laboratory has utilized the supercomputing system to design, screen and identify potential SARS-CoV-2 antibody candidates.
The COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium will employ Corona’s free compute time to support research efforts in line with the virus. The supercomputer will also simulate interactions between the virus’s proteins and small molecules to validate potential antiviral mixtures.
“We’ll have more resources, so we can run more cases and potentially get to new designs for both antibodies and small molecules faster, that may lead to better treatments,†said Jim Brase, deputy associate director for programs at LLNL.
