Why Sierra the Supercomputer Had to Die | EUROtoday

Supercomputers could be measured in a number of methods, however the very important statistic is their capacity to carry out floating-point operations per second, or flops. Flopping as quick as doable is what makes you profitable. At her peak, Sierra may hit 94.64 petaflops—94.64 quadrillion floating-point operations—per second. El Capitan, at 1.809 exaflops, is about 19 instances sooner. In late 2025, he was formally declared the world’s quickest supercomputer. Sierra’s juice, Neely says, was not well worth the squeeze.

There was no huge pink button, no large lever, that turned Sierra off. Someone may’ve simply minimize the cords, positive, however that’s not the beneficial process. First, Sierra’s person scientists had been warned, by way of e-mail, to save lots of their work. Then a DNR was formally instituted—no new components.

The decommissioning proceeded in phases, beginning with the compute nodes and the rack switches—administration nodes are final, since they’re wanted till the very finish. The course of entails operating scripts that, digitally, shut the pc down, after which exhausting energy switches are flipped off too. There’s additionally a dehydration. When she was alive, Sierra may get fairly scorching, so the lab recirculated hundreds of gallons of water per minute, funneled by veiny pipes that got here up from below her floorboards. As she approached demise, that water needed to be drained. It was examined by security workers first, to make sure it was an environmentally wholesome pH.

Some of the pipes that stored Sierra cool.

Photograph: Balazs Gardi