INL’s Teton supercomputer open for business

Idaho National Laboratory has brought its newest high-performance supercomputer, named Teton, online and made it available to users through the Department of Energy's Nuclear Science User Facilities program. The system, now the flagship machine in the lab's Collaborative Computing Center, quadruples INL's total computing capacity and enters service as the 85th fastest supercomputer in the world.

Teton delivers 20.8 quadrillion calculations per second-four times the capability of the Sawtooth computer-while occupying just one-third of Sawtooth's footprint. Designed as one of the largest CPU-only supercomputers in operation, Teton is tailored to support the modeling and simulation codes used for nuclear reactor design, which are often better suited to CPU architectures than to GPU systems. Computations that previously required days are now expected to finish within hours.

NSUF director Brenden Heidrich said that the system "represents a significant investment in the computational infrastructure needed to accelerate advanced reactor development." He added, "Teton will enable researchers to model and simulate next-generation nuclear technologies with unprecedented fidelity, dramatically reducing the time from concept to deployment."

The addition comes as the Collaborative Computing Center has faced oversubscription, with more researchers requesting access than the available systems could accommodate. With Teton now in operation, INL expects shorter wait times and expanded access for users working on nuclear materials and technology development.

Teton joins the lab's existing supercomputers-Sawtooth, Bitterroot, Hoodoo, and Wind River-which will continue operating to meet the growing demand from industry, academia, and national laboratories.