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Supercomputers To Move To Specialization?
lucasw writes "The Japan Earth Simulator outperformed a computer at Los Alamos (previously the world's fastest) by a factor of three while using fewer, more specialized processors and advanced interconnect technology. This spawned multiple government reports that many suspected would ask for more funding in the U.S. for custom supercomputer architectures and less emphasis on clustering commodity hardware. One report released yesterday suggests a balanced approach."
Ignoring size, how does the cost of a cluster of fewer, highly specialized computers (with special interconnects, etc.) compare with that of a cluster of more, less specialized computers?
Teraflops per dollar is important, let's not forget that.
The Japan Earth Simulator outperformed a computer at Los Alamos (previously the world's fastest) by a factor of three while using fewer, more specialized processors...
What is the difference between processor designed to simulate earthquakes (et al) and an ordinary, off-the-shelf processor? I mean - so they optomized floating point operations. Is that it?
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If you're going to have a supercomputer do one thing, of course specialize it. An Earth simulation surely has a set number of formulae whose calculations are to be optimized as much as possible, even to the hardware level.
But if you want a versitile, general-purpose supercomputer, why not go with the clustering solution?
The main area in which we saw benefit was switching from the Portland Group Fortran Compiler to the Intel Fortran Compiler, which cut the timestep (simulation time/real time) nearly in half.
Every cluster in the department is assembled from commodity x86 components. Groups here have been moving from proprietary Unix architectures to Linux/x86 systems and clusters. Our group started out on RS/6000s, then moved to SPARC, and is now moving to x86. In terms of price/performance there really is no comparison.
As for TCO, the lifetimes of clusters here are relatively short, one or two years at the most. Thus a high initial outlay cannot be set by lower cost of operation.
Definitely a really huge super-computer would be neat to have but honestly are they putting the ones we already have to good use?
From what I've heard [anecdotally] computers like the earth simulator go vastly under utilized for the most part.
So given that most nations [including the US] have budget problems specially concerning education couldn't people think of better uses for money?
And before anyone throws a "it's the technology of it" argument my way, I'd like to add that if anything I'd rather have the money spent on researching how to make high performance low power processors [and memory/etc] instead. E.g. an Athlon XP 2Ghz that runs at 15W would be wicked more impressive than a 50,000 processor super computer that runs a highly efficient idle loop 99% of the time.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It took Sputnik to kickstart our spacemindedness; I for one consider it sad that a "tremendous amount of interest" -- and the funding that comes with it -- in high-performance computing seems only to have arisen/regenerated with the influence of competitive international politics. Are we really so hardly advanced that our respective national egos are still the driving force behind enthusiasm, financial or otherwise, in certain areas of science?
I don't really see that as bad. Yes, it may look like pure ego, but the space race gave us so much that filtered into the commercial/private sector. From advanced computers to Velcro(tm). From my perspective, being the most advanced nation in as many areas as possible is a good defense, both economically and in a homeland security sense.
Frankly, I don't want the fastest computer chips on the desktop to be designed by a company in another country (even if Intel makes them outside of the US) and I would rather that the cutting edge, be cut here, in my native country. I am sure other people in other countries feel the same, that pushed all of us to new heights. In the end, the technologies are shared anyway. Most anyone in the world can buy Intel chips, for example.
If no one cared who could race a bicycle the fastest, Lance Armstrong would be just some guy who had cancer. Instead, our desire to compete and excell and outdo our neighbors has benefited EVERYONE a great deal. It can bring out the bad side from time to time, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. This urge to compete and win is not unique to America by any means, it is part of being human: man the animal.
I say bring on the computer chip wars: Lets all compete, Japanese, Americans, Europeans, Russians, come one come all. In the end, we will all benefit, no matter who has the bragging rights for a day.
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If you'd like to see what these people are up to for yourself, here is a link to their website. Lots of performance data, lists of projects, etc.