AFRL’s Newest Supercomputer “Raider” Promises to Compute Years’ Worth of Data in Days, Saving Time, Money

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The Raider, or technology insertion, or TI, 21 system is a supercomputer and part of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program, which is housed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, August 29, 2023. The supercomputer is a national resource with the Air Force, Army, and Navy as its biggest customers. Recently, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Digital Capabilities Directorate placed an order for the next supercomputer, which will be delivered in 2024. The next two systems to be installed are the TI 23 Flyer and TI 23 Raven, which will support the unclassified and classified systems, respectively (U.S. Air Force photo/Aleah M. Castrejon).
The Raider, or technology insertion, or TI, 21 system is a supercomputer and part of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program, which is housed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, August 29, 2023. The supercomputer is a national resource with the Air Force, Army, and Navy as its biggest customers. Recently, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Digital Capabilities Directorate placed an order for the next supercomputer, which will be delivered in 2024. The next two systems to be installed are the TI 23 Flyer and TI 23 Raven, which will support the unclassified and classified systems, respectively (U.S. Air Force photo/Aleah M. Castrejon).

September 15, 2023 | Originally published by Air Force Research Lab on September 11, 2023

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFRL) – The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, is now home to its newest supercomputer, named the Raider. The FY21 technology insertion, or TI-21, system is part of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program. While Raider is housed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, it also serves as a national resource as the Air Force, Army, and Navy each have access to Raider’s supercomputing capabilities.

The TI-21 system, named in honor of the Doolittle Raiders, can calculate about 12 petaFLOPS, or floating-point operations, per second. In comparison, the previous supercomputer, Thunder, installed in 2015, calculated only 3.1 petaFLOPS, or 3,126,240,000,000,000 floating point operations, per second.