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Japan's New Supercomputing Toy
deman1985 writes "As reported by UPI, Japan has unveiled their fastest supercomputer yet. Assembled from Hitachi and IBM components, the new system sports total performance around 59 trillion calculations per second and comes at a cool 5-year lease price of $30 million. Pictures of the beast can be found at Mainichi Daily News."
FP
Is it getting the most of that computing power by running Windows?
Error: Sig not found.
But imagine a a beowulf cluster of these.
*sigh* I miss when that was popular...I was in college, dating a total bitch, living off of ramen, playing CS until my grades started to suffer, and getting four hours of sleep a night...good times, good times.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these. And also does this run linux?!?!?
There, i've said it...you know someone would have!
Hmmm... Pie...
I for one welcome our Japanese Supercomputing Toy overlord! I also welcome Godzilla to fight this Supercomputer in an epic battle (Pictures of the beast can be found at a random website http://www.xofacto.com/justin20/shinzen-godzilla-6 2.jpg).
I also welcome females back to my crib.
According to top500.org, the fastest computer is an IBM Blue Gene/L with 280 TeraFlops. This Japanese team would have been #1 about a year ago.
It still cannot run Windows Vista...
They're gonna ask the public for research themes? ... AFTER THEY BOUGHT IT???
:-)
I'd love to see this from top500.org
name,where,how many processors,average FLOPS,max FLOPS,***actually being used FLOPS***
Then sort it based on the latter.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
And does anyone have an update on the Jap's supersonic jet project? Last story I remember was a model crashing in Australia. Go Japan!
Give it five years and it'll be a commercially available laptop, ten at the most.
I got into Linux for the free beer, but nobody seems to have any
You know, I think there should be a kind of "size cap" on these stats. A computer should be ranked higher if it can squeeze more performance out of so many cm2 worth of die or something. Otherwise you can just keep making computers more powerful by just adding more and more nodes. That does not excite me *shrug*. -naeem
Now what to do with it?
How about installing one over at Slashdot HQ?
You guys need it for all the people who keep missing their chance at getting the first post.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does 59 trillion calculations approximately equal 59 teraflops?
Isn't that nr 6 in the world?
The list is here.
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/index.html
e ne_glance.html
Here are the specs:
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/deepcomputing/blueg
Yes, it runs Linux!
The supercomputer, consisting of two systems -- Hitachi's multipurpose supercomputer with a peak performance of 2.15 terra flops and IBM Japan's Blue Gene Solution with a peak performance of 57.3 terra flops -- is capable of making about 59 trillion calculations per second, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Wednesday.
Err, I know it comes from IBM Japan, but since the bulk of the horsepower is coming from an IBM Blue Gene, does this really qualify as meaningful with relation to Japan? I think they'd be much more interested in Hitachi coming out with their own unit that could topple the IBM's.
Interesting slanted design of the racks.
Is there a design reasons for that (air flow, etc)?
Or is this marketing wanting to be "different"?
Hey! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!!
...but imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
Hey, somebody had to say it!
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"The institute will ask the public to propose specific themes of research activities using the supercomputer system." Seti@Home! Duh...
"Toy" seems pretty appropriate here. They seem to have bought it without fully knowing what they were going to do with it yet: "The institute will ask the public to propose specific themes of research activities using the supercomputer system."
is to allow for more FF-XI servers. Duh.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Processor - PowerPC 440 700MHz; two per compute node - Lowpower allows dense packaging; better processor-memory balance
Not particularly powerful CPUs individually, but I guess if you cram enough of them together it adds up.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Well, the answer to life, the universe and everything still hasn't been answered....
Have we had another moderation system failure... the number of posts making it to my +3 browsing has dropped dramatically in the last two days... I'm expecting there to be almost minimal moderation after today and it to be a general trollfest again by Friday...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Hi,
Given Moore's Law, and given increasing performance gains in computer architecture and new work on algorithms, how likely is it that one of these days one of these machines (or one of their exponentially more powerful progeny) bootstrap themselves into a "Singularity", an AI which at the point of self-awareness becomes almost instantaneously god-like?
I know that this has been the stuff of Science - Fiction wet dreams for decades, but will this old idea - like so many other ideas first found in science-fiction - one day become reality? And would the God-Head be dictatorial in its nihilistic contempt of its creators, or perhaps more Frankenstinian in its attempts to be accepted by humanity?
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security - Ben Franklin
You don't say. I wonder if they put those numbers into the machine(s) to get that sum...
Ok, I haven't been keeping up --- this Japanese machine is, I gather, massively parallel. Suppose I wanted to find out which single processor was the speed king for floating point calculations. Is it as simple as sorting for the highest number on SpecFP2000?
Under Moore's Law, the price of computing power halves every 18 months. So that means in 5 years, the price ought to be about 1/(2^(5/1.5)) =~ a tenth of that.
That means in five years I'll be able to afford it on my desktop for about what I make an hour.
Woohoo!
I hope it comes with a better mouse. I have one of those mechanical ones, and it keeps getting granola in it.
sigs, as if you care.
True, the biggest BlueGene/L implementation does best this number. Also interesting to note, this thing has BlueGene in it: " The supercomputer, consisting of two systems -- Hitachi's multipurpose supercomputer with a peak performance of 2.15 terra flops and IBM Japan's Blue Gene Solution with a peak performance of 57.3 terra flops -- is capable of making about 59 trillion calculations per second, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Wednesday. "
In other news, South Korea unveiled its new supercomputer: KEKEKE ^____^
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
How sad is it that I was thrilled they included a link to a picture of it?
And how did the parent get a score of 2?
It's not a toy OK! It just's able to run Counterstrike at really high framerates because scienctific simulations and game mechanics are very similar operations...
Now if you'll excuse me, my aimbots need seeing to.
May the Maths Be with you!
I just wait for that beast to get slahsdotted, any minute now. Wait, they didn't run the web server on that one, did they? High energy accelerator research... Hrrmmmppff..
...we almost have a computer that can start Adobe applications in less than one full work day.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Yeah, its for air flow.. html
See the large ppt presentation here:
http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/briefing_day
Power, Packaging and Cooling, slide 20, I think.
Basically, the ducts are larger where the airflow is greater.
What they don't tell you is that the PlayStation 3 is expected to have the power of TWO of these babies. Also, it will model the weather in your neighborhood down to the atomic molecule scale, WHILE putting out fifteenteen HD video streams. Sony PS3 department was heard to say "We are not competing against that new supercomputer. It is too slow."
I think when the lists are released this year, the top one hundred computers will be in the 10 to 300 teraflop range. With the cell CPU chipset peaking at a quarter-teraflop, one teraflop is merely high performance these days.
Their tag line will be "Finally, something fun to do with 59 trillion calculations per second!". But nobody will buy it still because there really isn't anything fun about Mac what with virtually no game support.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
What use if the Hitachi supercomputer if it only adds a mere 2 teraflops? Shouldn't they discard these 2 teraflops if it's only the front-end used to access the IBM system?
i'm writing this from my Earth Simulator laptop that will be commercially available next year
That lease price is probably per year and a year is approximately 31556909 seconds.
Assuming a US trillion (1E12), gives 59E12 operations per second, or about 1.86E21 operations per year. That is about 62E12 operations per dollar. There will probably be some (rather significant) additional costs to run and cool the beast...
1. Someone posted the BeoWulf joke 5 posts up.
2. Supercomputer are basically BeoWulf clusters
3. Someone else posted the same joke 3 posts up, but included "Will it run linux".
4. It isn't the first time someone has made the mistake of their/they're
5. You aren't the first to point that out to anyone.
6. Somone else will reply to your post and point that out two posts after mine.
7. Someone else in this comment thread will also make misuse of their and they're.
8. Somone two posts down from your original will also make a mention of a Beowulf cluster.
9. And 5 posts after that another will try to get modded funny by trying to include "In Soviet Russia, only old people use Beowulf Clusters Running linux."
Really... Soviet russia cliches may still be funny, but Beowulf and "Will it run linux" aren't.
Please think of the children and refrain from mentioning either two ever again. If you are tempted to mention it, it means 5 other people already have by the time somone posts it.
No one has to say. Really... They don't.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Isn't that redundant?
what kind of frame rate does it pull on HL2?
Do you have ESP?
Did you see the pictures? It's powered by millions of tiny little Jawas!
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
1. Someone posted the BeoWulf joke 5 posts up.
That what this all is, a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf cluster jokes. You don't get it, do you?
2. Supercomputer are basically BeoWulf clusters
Congratulations! You win the "Duh!" Awards of the day!
3. Someone else posted the same joke 3 posts up, but included "Will it run linux".
Humor is in the eye of the beholder.
4. It isn't the first time someone has made the mistake of their/they're
This isn't the first time I've corrected them, either. Nor will it be the last. Your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection on your intelligence level. Ergo, he's an idiot. You're defending an idiot. What does that make you?
5. You aren't the first to point that out to anyone.
Yet they never seem to learn...
6. Somone else will reply to your post and point that out two posts after mine.
Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
7. Someone else in this comment thread will also make misuse of their and they're.
And I'll gleefully point out their flaws as well.
8. Somone two posts down from your original will also make a mention of a Beowulf cluster.
See response to #1.
9. And 5 posts after that another will try to get modded funny by trying to include "In Soviet Russia, only old people use Beowulf Clusters Running linux."
See response to #3.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
...a Beowulf .... AAAACK!!!
As usual, the Japanese press acts like it's a Hitachi product. But really it's an IBM. We know the drill... America sucks, everyone else is great... Japan is so high tech, until you actually go there.
Hooray!
What the hell do you do with 59TFlops anyway? Levitation?
This is not, as a misinterpretation of the summary might suggest, the fastest supercomputer on the planet, just the fastest one in Japan. That title of world's fastest is still held by the BlueGene at Lawrence Livermore, which boasts something like 350 teraflops peak. Interestingly enough, this new machine in Japan is a smaller BlueGene computer: same architecture, fewer racks.
How many Libraries of Congress will it hold? :)
How many football fields does it cover?
I need some stats I can relate to!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Comparing pictures of this KEK Blue Gene with pictures of Lawrence Livermore's Blue Gene/L, what strikes me is ... one of them appears to be upside-down.
Any logic to this? Or is the idea that when they add another gazillion processors to each one, they will be able to meet up nicely somewhere over the Pacific.
What happens to the "fastest computer yet" after a few years (decades.) They are impressive now but eventually they will become slower than a common desktop machine. Do they have a life cycle where they start as a companie's fastest machine, but later become a server or go into some other duty that doesn't require the world's fastest machine (after the company goes out and buys an even faster machine.) Is there a market for such machines? Or are they so expensive to run that they are eventually just recycled or sold as scrap? It might be cool to have the worlds fastest machine as of 1990 or so to play with. Are such machines still in use?
Yes the linpack performance is better, but I think 38tf of Earth simulator is likely to get a lot more real work done than 57tf of blue gene. The blue gene is a really elegant design for creating a very inexpensive supercomputer, which means one can affordably buy a very large system. However, the balance of the system is a little weak in terms of memory bandwidth, and interconnect bandwidth, as compared to the Earth simulator.
Furthermore, scaling most codes to the tens of thousands of processors of a blue gene is very difficult. Most jobs on the earth simulator, and other large systems, run on a few dozen processors, as the algorithms become communication bound above that number. Algorithm designers are slowly improving this bottleneck, but it's something that must be done anew for each piece of code.
Not to say that this isn't a fantastic machine, and one offered at a very modest price for the capability. I simply object to the title of "Japan's fastest supercomputer".
Designing better drugs by simulating molecular interactions and modelling virus, bacterial, cancer mechanisms. Duh.
That said, the politicians will probably use it for something useless as usual.
...why the Hitachi (Japanese) tiddler (~2TFlops) gets the same billing as the IBM machine (~57TFlops, built in Rochester, USA).
Oh wait - when added together, these two make a *Japanese* machine.
Forgive me, but if >90% of the complexity comes from the USA they might as well not have bought the Hitachi system in the first place.
This is just a national pride/publicity thing in my opinion - the Japanese establishment want to have a machine to crow over.
Wef
IANAE of supercomputers by any means, but to me it seems that the first 57.3 terra flops makes adding the other 2.15 terra flops rather superfluous. Isn't that like DuctTaping an Estes-C onto a Saturn V?
[/sarcasm]
I hear the NOS sticker is good for two teraflops, and if they put a big unpainted wing on top of it, that's another three teraflops. Stage III, including the watermelon shooter con exhaust pipe, takes it up an additional ten teraflops!
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Is it me... or is it that ever since Seymore Cray died, supercomputers decided to take on a dull filing-cabinet look rather than the futuristic look?
Ok, IBM gets some points for the "its not a cube, it slanted" look... but where are the blinky lights? Surely for as much money that is paid, a few pennies can be diverted to the visual appeal?
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
It may be able to run Windows... but it sure as hell won't be able to run DNF!
Sounds a lot like Intel's first dual processors. Let's just slap together a Hitachi and an IBM, add up the TFlops, and claim victory.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
FLOPS/(W^2*cm^3) ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
...is that with fewer /. comments (+4) to obsessively read through, I find I suddenly have more time to get other stuff done. I, for one, hope that this less-cream-filters-to-the-top 'feature' stays. :)
Power to the Peaceful
Earliest estimates for simulating 1 human brain in real time using a very basic neural network setup is somewhere around the year 2020. This is just based on number of neurons and number of connections. When you throw in the glial cells that were previously thought to be relatively unimportant, despite being a large percentage of the brain, then it's probably further still than 2020.
Additionally, to try to simulate ALL of the chemical and electrical interactions/processes that go on inside the brain (just to be sure there isn't something important in those details), then it gets pushed out even further.
So, 1 human brain is a long way off, and that doesn't even take into account making the thing do something useful, it's just the raw processing power. To achieve AI requires understanding of how the brain works, so push it of even farther (further?).
Finally, intelligence is purely a mapping between specific goals, and the actions required to achieve those goals (problem solving by abstracting prior experience and pattern matching to current conditions). There is a mis-conception that you could have "god-like" intelligence that is all knowing and can even give the "correct" answer always, etc. The answer to any problem is specific to the conditions that surround it. Although I don't have a mathematical proof that says it's impossible to have this perfect "god-like" intelligence, I strongly suspect that it is mathematically provable.
It looks like it's full of Jawas.
Does it run OSx86?
Terra is also the Latin word for earth. Tera stands for the factor 10^12.
Your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection on your intelligence level.
No, your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection of your education not just your intelligence level. Try talking with a few people outside the US, which use English as a 3rd language, and you might learn how meaningless your supposed link is.
Sorry, I just had to do that.
Any other Japanese and English speakers out there find Mainichi Daily news to be a little redundant? :-p
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Not by much, though. Ray Kurzweil makes a good case that the price-performance of computers has been doubling in just over a year, and that the rate of change itself is increasing. So, if simulating glial cells require 100 times the computing power of simulating only neurons, then it should be possible in less than seven years after the first neural simulator would be possible.
Although I don't have a mathematical proof that says it's impossible to have this perfect "god-like" intelligence, I strongly suspect that it is mathematically provable.
While I think you're probably right on that point, I also think that's a straw man. If we're capable of building a computer with 1,000 times the human-style intelligence of a biological person, then sure that would be of interest - even if it weren't actually infinitely smarter than we are. Singularity advocates contend that we only need to build a computer smarter than the best computer designers, and then step back to let the positive feedback loop take care of the rest. I truly believe this will happen in my lifetime, and probably before I turn 50.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
... cause they only have it for 5 years
Sure its fast and all of that but does it play WoW?
...Ray Kurzweil makes a good case...
I have not read Ray's book, but the recap I did read made me think it was not worth reading. I don't remember all the details other than I logged him away in my brain as a person that was not making valid claims. I could be wrong.
While I think you're probably right on that point, I also think that's a straw man. If we're capable of building a computer with 1,000 times the human-style intelligence of a biological person, then sure that would be of interest - even if it weren't actually infinitely smarter than we are. Singularity advocates contend that we only need to build a computer smarter than the best computer designers, and then step back to let the positive feedback loop take care of the rest. I truly believe this will happen in my lifetime, and probably before I turn 50.
I agree it is very interesting and exciting to achieve almost any level of success in this field, especially a 1,000-times-smarter-than-humans computer. But my gut tells me that goals/motivation are as important a topic in this brain as the pure processing power. How do you get it to do what you want? I think we will make steady progress, I just think there is far more work than many realize.
> They're gonna ask the public for research themes? ... AFTER THEY BOUGHT IT???
;)
;)
;^)
This is not unusual.
Universities around the world are filled with expensive equipment that doesn't get much use.
What usually happens is that somebody has a vague idea for a research project, applies for a funding grant, but doesn't expect to get it, and then three years down the track the grant gets approved, and you have to buy something that you never expected to get, and you're not sure what to do with it.
Part of my job is making such expensive purchases accessible by as many people as possible.
I have access to 4 clusters at the moment, and all four have been 99% idle/underused from the day they were bought, and will continue to be so until I've had a go at them. I've got one cluster to the point that it is now being used to 100% of it's capacity and I've just started on the second one. (This second one has been mostly idle for nearly two years now)
It's quite interesting to note that once people can make full use of a cluster, they will quickly come up with ideas and projects that will start pushing the cluster to it's full capacity.
Heck, Weta FX (Responsible for in Lord of the Rings and King Kong, but I'm pretty sure you knew that
ran short of rendering grunt for the final battle scene in Return of the King.
(The battlescenes with all the oliphaunts)
So they rang the producers and got funding for another IBM Blade cluster, at approx $4m (something like that)
Bought it, build it, used it for LOTR, used it for a little bit of rendering for two other movies - Zorro and Van Helsink I think - and then it sat idle for a year!
I'll start work on that one soon, I've got access about 150+ 2.8Ghz Intel Xeons that need a good workout
(No, none of the clusters run Windows - sorry - and not a single beowulf cluster
I'm thoroughly enjoying it. What impressed me the most is that it has less than 500 pages of content, then 200 pages of notes and references. I don't know whether his predictions will be correct, but he certainly makes the raw data that he analyzed available for you to draw your own conclusions.
How do you get it to do what you want?
Well, that's definitely the scary part. It seems quite likely that an entity much smarter than a person might have goals and motivations that are perfectly reasonable - and completely alien.
I think his "weaker" proposition, that we eventually become the AI as our biological neurons are gradually replaced by nanotech work-alikes to the point that we're predominantly nonbiological, seems more likely in the "short" term.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Does it use AJAX?
can it run Vista?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I don't care about the story. I just thought the redundancy of the newspaper's translated name was rather humorous.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Does it run linux?
Do they offer micropayment options for really small calculations?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... how many people can you put in a conference call using Skype?
No, your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection of your education not just your intelligence level. Try talking with a few people outside the US, which use English as a 3rd language, and you might learn how meaningless your supposed link is.
As a measure of respect for the language you're speaking -- whatever language that may be -- the least you can do is speak it (or write it) correctly. If I were speaking in German, criticism of improper grammar would be equally valid. This criticism is not restricted to Anglo-centric languages despite your attempt to paint it as such.
If you can't do it right, don't bother doing it at all. In this day and age of grammar checkers, spell checkers, and the resources of the Internet in general, no one can use the excuse that they didn't know better. To do any less excuses laziness and invites mediocrity. Typographical errors are one thing, but the obvious grammatical inaccuracy shown in the OP has no excuse whatsoever.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky