What once was considered the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the Aurora supercomputer is now being forgotten. Intel has removed support for its Xeon Phi Knights Mill and Knights Landing accelerators from the LLVM/Clang 19 compiler, which essentially means the end of support for any kind of the MIC architecture once meant to power the Exascale-class Aurora supercomputer, reports Phoronix.
The Knights Mill processors faced numerous delays and reportedly didn't meet performance targets, ultimately resulting in the cancellation of the first revision of the Aurora supercomputer after several years of delays. The DoE later changed the design of Aurora to employ Intel's Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio compute GPUs and faced yet more delays and performance issues primarily due to problems with Intel's Sapphire Rapids CPUs and Ponte Vecchio compute GPUs. These hardware issues, along with cooling system malfunctions and other stability problems, still prevent Aurora from achieving its full potential. However, the system is now on track for full deployment sometime this year, a whopping nine years since Aurora was first announced.
