OREANDA-NEWS. June 16, 2017. AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced that it has been selected by the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) to accelerate critical computing technology research for the development of the nation’s first exascale supercomputers. The new three-year PathForward program provides funding for research and development to drive critical advances of next-generation supercomputing hardware technologies.

PathForward differs from previous exascale research efforts in that it puts even greater emphasis on co-design to foster innovation, encouraging close collaboration between AMD and other program participants. The PathForward program will address the four key technical challenges of exascale computing: parallelism, memory and storage, reliability, and energy consumption. AMD will work on CPU and GPU microarchitecture, memory systems, component integration, and high-speed interconnects. AMD’s work for PathForward will emphasize an open, standards-based approach to heterogeneous computing to improve the performance, power-efficiency, and ease of use for exascale systems.

“We are honored to be among the select few companies chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy to provide necessary research supporting the development of the advance technologies required for exascale supercomputers,” said Alan Lee, corporate vice president for research and advanced development, AMD. “We have been working on exascale research for five years now, and PathForward will take our work to a new level, focusing on system-level technology integration with partners. We are well prepared for this initiative, as evidenced by our high-performance technologies development along with long-standing participation in standards bodies.”

The ECP seeks to address the nation’s most pressing scientific challenges by advancing simulation-based scientific discoveries made possible by the world’s highest performing exascale supercomputers. The technologies developed as part of this initiative could also positively impact low-power embedded, cloud/datacenter, and high-performance computing applications for diverse fields ranging from medical science to astrophysics and climate modeling.

AMD is committed to innovation and supports the DOE’s goals for capable exascale supercomputing systems. This new research and development effort is aligned with the company’s ongoing focus on high performance computing through x86 CPUs and graphics processors for deep learning, data analytics, simulations, and other demanding applications.

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For more than 45 years, AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics, and visualization technologies – the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms, and the datacenter. Hundreds of millions of consumers, leading Fortune 500 businesses, and cutting-edge scientific research facilities around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work, and play.