Penguin Computing will deliver two supercomputers to the US Department of Defense for $68 million.

Funded under the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program, each system is more powerful than anything Penguin has publicly shipped to date.

The Navy DoD Supercomputing Resource Center (Navy DSRC) at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi will receive a Penguin Computing TrueHPC platform with 176,128 compute cores from 3rd Gen AMD Epyc processors and 144 Nvidia A100 GPUs. It is interconnected by an Nvidia HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand network and supported by more than 26PB of Data Direct Networks storage, including over 4PB of high-speed NVMe-based solid-state storage and 370TB of system memory.

The system is expected to be capable of 8.5 petaflops of peak performance.

The Air Force Research Lab’s DSRC at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio will get a Penguin Computing TrueHPC platform with 189,440 compute cores from 3rd Gen AMD Epyc processors and 152 Nvidia A100 GPGPUs. Also interconnected by an Nvidia HDR 200Gb/sec InfiniBand network, it is supported by more than 20PB of DDN storage, including over a petabyte of high-speed NVMe-based solid-state storage and 405TB of system memory.

It is expected to be able to provide nine petaflops of peak performance. Both systems are scheduled to enter production service in early 2022.

“By implementing Penguin’s TrueHPC solution, the DoD HPCMP user community will be able to conduct advanced research for the highly complex problems the user community is tasked with solving,” said Sid Mair, president of Penguin Computing.

“Through our work with Nvidia and AMD, we’re able to provide the Department of Defense with significantly higher density and operational efficiencies, which equates to exceptional value when you’re using very large scale systems that have extremely high power requirements.”

A small Californian vendor, Penguin has offered HPC solutions and services since 1998, experiencing its shares of ups and downs. In 2018, it took out a $33 million line of credit with Wells Fargo, before being acquired by Cayman Islands-based Smart Global Holdings for $85m.

But that sum included $25m in payments that would only be given if undisclosed performance targets were met. It is not known if the DoD deal will help it meet those targets.

“We are pleased to continue our longstanding technology partnership with Penguin Computing to push the boundaries of HPC and supercomputing,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center and Embedded Solutions Business Group at AMD.

“The combination of our powerful 3rd Gen AMD Epyc processors and Penguin’s Tundra platform will help the Modernization Office’s user community to solve complex problems to achieve their goal of addressing the Department of Defense’s biggest challenges.”