DDN to Provide Storage Solution for Two DOD Supercomputers

DDN announced that its data storage technology will be implemented on the Department of Defense’s high-performance computing enterprise.

The company said that its EXAScaler ES400X appliances will work alongside Penguin Computing‘s TrueHPC platform to drive computing resources at the Navy DOD Supercomputing Resource Center and the Air Force Research Laboratory DSRC.

The DSRCs are two of the five supercomputing centers in the Pentagon’s HPC Modernization Program, which is aimed at delivering advanced processing capabilities to the science and technology and test and evaluation communities, DNN said Tuesday.

DNN said that the Navy DSRC and AFRL DSRC rank among the 100 most powerful supercomputers in the world.

The Navy DSRC system will have access to 4 petabytes of NVMe flash-based and 22 petabytes of hard disk drive-based EXAScaler storage, the company said.

DNN added that the AFRL DSRC platform will be supported by 20 petabytes of EXAScaler storage to enable high-performance analytics and artificial intelligence applications.

Both systems are expected to enter into production service in early 2022, DNN said.

Jeff Jordan, vice president of federal sales at DNN, said he expects the DOD to use its new supercomputing resources to tackle challenges in coronavirus research, AI, machine learning and virtual prototyping.

DNN said it previously deployed multi-petabyte storage solutions to other DOD clients working with AI and analytics, including the Army Research Laboratory and the Army Engineer Research and Development Center.