Whamcloud Wins DOE FastForward Storage and IO Project

July 13th, 2012 · No Comments

Whamcloud, a venture-backed company formed from a worldwide network of high-performance computing (HPC) storage industry veterans, has been awarded the Storage and I/O Research & Development subcontract for the Department of Energy’s FastForward program. FastForward is a jointly funded collaboration between DOE Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to initiate partnerships with multiple companies to accelerate the research and development (R&D) of critical technologies needed for extreme scale computing, on the path toward exascale computing. Exascale computing is essentially a grand challenge to provide the next level of computational power required to help ensure the prosperity and security of the United States. The DOE’s strategic plan seeks to address the nation’s most pressing scientific challenges by advancing simulation-based scientific discovery made possible by the world’s highest performing exascale supercomputers.

FastForward is administered by DOE and contracted through Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC as part of a seven lab consortium (Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories). The subcontract scope clearly identifies key R&D necessary for a new object storage paradigm for HPC exascale computing. The developed technology will also address next-generation storage mechanisms required by the Big Data market. The subcontract is set for a two-year schedule through the middle of 2014 and begins immediately.

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