Supercomputing

HenryTo · Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 6:42 pm Post subject: Supercomputing

Cray's supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) upgraded (doubled) its performance to 119 teraflops - putting it number 2 on the world's Top 500 list of supercomputers:

http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1370386.html

HenryTo · Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 7:57 pm Post subject:

An article estimating the total computing power of the Googleplex network:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/85218_google_surpasses_supercomputer/

HenryTo · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:10 pm Post subject:

IBM and Los Alamos close to breaking the petaflop barrier - coming 9 years after an Intel system broke the teraflop barrier:

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207602779

HenryTo · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 9:12 pm Post subject:

NASA set for a major supercomputer upgrade:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9084238

probtrader · Senior Poster Joined: 22 Oct 2005 Posts: 130

Simple business model: define performance-per-watt, rather than in absolute terms. Seems to work.

HenryTo · Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 11:51 pm Post subject:

A new breed of supercomputers - as envisioned by researchers at UC Berkeley:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37298/113/

probtrader · Senior Poster Joined: 22 Oct 2005 Posts: 130

Cray sales down 40% in Q1 while announcing partnership with Intel the day before:
http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=15513

How did Cray performed during the last bull?
http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1209596725324&chddm=494446&cmpto=NASDAQ:INTC&q=NASDAQ:CRAY&

Cray -80%
Intel +20%

Main reason is probably the rise of commodity hardware clusters. Semiconductors integration is reaching a wall in terms of transistors per inch, due to heating and frequency limits, so even Moore's law might be proven wrong soon.

HenryTo · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 11:11 am Post subject:

Intel now definitely getting back into the HPC market in a serious way:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cray and Intel Collaborate to Develop Future Supercomputing Technologies

Apr 28, 2008 12:00:06 (ET)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. & SEATTLE, Apr 28, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Cray Inc. (CRAY, Trade ) and Intel Corporation announced today they signed a multi-year agreement to advance high-performance computing (HPC) on Intel microprocessors while delivering broad new Intel and Cray technologies in future Cray server systems. The collaboration of these two industry leaders will result in HPC systems that will help solve some of the world's most complex scientific, engineering and humanitarian challenges.

"We're excited at the potential of bringing together Intel's powerful silicon expertise and Cray's industry leadership in scalable HPC systems," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "We pride ourselves in offering the most innovative supercomputing systems and our customers will now enjoy greater choice in processor technologies.

"This collaboration provides the HPC market segment with access to the best microprocessors the industry has to offer at any point in time, in the most advanced supercomputers in the world," Ungaro added. "This further strengthens Cray's industry-leading adaptive supercomputing vision as we move into the Cascade timeframe and beyond."

The two companies plan to explore future supercomputer component designs such as multi-core processing and advanced interconnects. As a result of this collaboration, Cray and Intel plan to develop a range of HPC systems and technologies over the next several years.

"Cray's commitment to Intel is a testament of our commitment to HPC and the strength of our hardware and software roadmap and many-core research," said Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "Throughout Cray's history, it has been an innovator in high-end HPC while Intel has pushed the boundaries of processor technology.

"The combination of this industry leadership and technical strength will allow HPC users to take advantage of future Xeon and other Intel processor technologies," Gelsinger said. "Together we will enable fundamental and historical problems of science and industry to be solved."

HenryTo · Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 1:48 am Post subject:

Intel's Pat Gelsinger's vision of where the supercomputing industry is heading for the foreseeable future:

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/106017

HenryTo · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:53 am Post subject:

Intel seeks to get back into the supercomputing race - an effort that they had halted during the late 1990s:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/23/intel_gelsinger_petascale/

HenryTo · Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:18 pm Post subject:

A preview of the next International Supercomputing Conference in June. Note that both the US and Japan are scrambling to build a 10 petaflop system by 2010. If completed, such a system will surpass the combined computing power of all the supercomputers currently on the "top 500 list" (the latter of which has a combined computing power of 7 petaflops).

http://www.supercomp.de/isc08/content/e2/e10/e22/e1671/e2908/index_eng.html

HenryTo · Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 2:38 am Post subject:

The second faster supercomputer in the world - the "Ranger" - has been deployed at UT Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9064259

HenryTo · Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 1:45 am Post subject:

Supercomputing over the last 15 years. Page 3 shows the increase in U.S. domination in the supercomputing space - from the first "Top 500 list" in 1993 to the latest one in November 2007. Note the relative decline of Japan as a supercomputing power over the last 15 years:

http://www.top500.org/files/TOP500_Looking_back_HWM.pdf

Other notable quotes:

HenryTo · Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:49 am Post subject:

The Constellation - Sun's and AMD's own supercomputer at UT Austin - is unveiled. A peak performance of 500 teraflops would put it in the number one spot on the "Top 500 list" if it is published today:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9871531-7.html?tag=nefd.top

HenryTo · Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:01 am Post subject:

In the "be careful what you wish for" department (along with true broadband stretching across the world) - but then, this is still 10 to 15 years away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IBM says breakthrough heralds supercomputer on chip
Thu Dec 6, 2007 1:25pm EST

By Georgina Prodhan

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) says it has made a breakthrough in converting electrical signals into light pulses that brings closer the day when supercomputing, which now requires huge machines, will be done on a single chip.

In research published on Thursday in the journal Optics Express, IBM said it had produced electro-optic modulators 100 to 1,000 times smaller than comparable silicon photonics modulators and small enough to fit on a processor chip.

By connecting processing cores on a chip by light instead of with wires, the problems of high energy consumption and heat generated by multi-core chips could be bypassed, enabling leaps in computing power.

IBM said it had reached a "milestone" in the quest to connect hundreds or thousands of processing cores on a tiny chip. By comparison there are nine cores on the sophisticated chips that power the Sony (6753.T: Quote, Profile, Research) PlayStation 3 games console.

"Just like fiber optic networks have enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by enabling users to exchange huge amounts of data from anywhere in the world, IBM's technology is bringing similar capabilities to the computer chip," said Will Green, IBM's lead scientist on the project.

He said using light instead of wires to send information between the cores could be as much as 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires.

Green told Reuters IBM had used standard industry processes and tools to make the tiny silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulators.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

That gave the research team confidence the process could be replicated commercially, although it would likely take at least a decade for that stage to be reached.

"We're looking at much more real-world applications in the timeframe of 10 to 15 years or something like that. There's a lot of pieces to come together. There are many challenges ahead," Green said in an interview.

He said in future tiny supercomputers on a chip could expend as little energy as a lightbulb, paving the way for enormous reductions in cost, energy, heat and space required while increasing communications bandwidth.

Technology services company IBM is also the world leader in supercomputers, which are used for problems requiring intensive calculations, for example in quantum physics, weather forecasting and molecular modeling.

Drastically shrinking the size and energy requirements of supercomputing could open up possibilities of powerful data analysis in remote locations or high-resolution three-dimensional image rendering in real time, Green said.

"You immediately can envision the mobile applications that that would allow you to do," he said. "Remote laboratory instruments for medical applications, screening for diseases or even complicated DNA analysis."

IBM's research team has been working on the project, partly funded by a U.S. government defense research agency, for about five years. Green declined to comment on the project's budget.

He also said it was impossible to predict what a supercomputer on a chip might eventually cost. "We're really at the beginning of the process," he said.

(Editing by Sue Thomas and David Holmes)

HenryTo · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:18 am Post subject:

A summary of the great gains made in the high-performance computing space over the last four to five years:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=308394&intsrc=news_ts_head