Slashdot Mirror
New Top 500 Supercomputer List
geaux and other readers let us know that the new Top 500 Supercomputer list is out. The top two both break the Petaflops barrier: LANL's IBM "RoadRunner" and ORNL's Cray XT5 "Jaguar." (Contrary to our discussion a few days back, IBM's last-minute upgrade of RoadRunner salvaged the top spot for Big Blue. Kind of like bidding on eBay.) The top six all run in excess of 400 Teraflops. HP has more systems in the top 500 than IBM, reversing the order of the previous list. Both Intel and AMD issued press releases crowing over their wins, and both are correct — AMD highlights its presence in 7 of the top 10, while Intel boasts that 379 of the top 500 use their chips.
more impressive, yes. more profitable? no.
but i'm glad to see AMD dominating the top 10 spots. i've always had a, perhaps irrational, affinity for AMD as the consummate underdog. plus, they always seemed to have a lower cost-to-performance ratio than Intel chips.
I don't think IBM/Los Alamos suddenly plopped down something in response to cray at the last minute (frankly, I don't think you could move that fast).
Any hardware upgrades were almost certainly in plan, and if there were none, they've had 6 months of tuning to extract better numbers oout of what they had.
I wouldn't be surprised if in 6 months, the Cray without any additional hardware managed a better number than RoadRunner without additional hardware. However, such a victory is diminished somewhat by the energy the Cray undoubtedly consumes to acheive what performance they do get.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Technically impressive, absolute given, as the current top few offer unique technologies (Cray's Interconnect, IBM's processors).
From a profitability standpoint, undoubtedly the more successful a vendor is closer to the top of the list, the more they undoubtedly had to give up margin-wise for the bragging rights.
From a marketability standpoint, things get a tad awkward I think for the vendors at the top. IBM has Cell and BlueGene showcased, which we all understand can be used to great ends at the expense of a more complicated programming model (though HPC is already so parallel, they shouldn't be too bothered by this aspect of Cell), but in terms of more day-to-day operations, the sole bragging point relevant to the common market they get is that they know how to deliver and help architect 9,000 systems to work efficiently together (which is not a small feat, but the hardware itself has too high a barrier to get into the common market). For Cray, I honestly am surprised they have stuck around with only this niche market and still have held on. Their IO architecture is interesting, but of lower value at more common scales. These systems are certainly not cheap, but they are up against stiff competition willing to slice prices to grandstand about success.
The other configurations are made out of servers and processors and networking equipment that can more readily be used by a wider audience. So as cool as the exotic tech is, I think the commodity aspects are more compelling to the profitable customers for these vendors. Given the type of HP's share, HP may be quite ecstatic with the current list.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
what does it matter if we can't communicate back when/if we find a signal? the impact such knowledge would have on human society, on human history, would be tremendous just by the philosophical implications alone.
should we stop all fundamental science research just because they don't have immediate practical or technological applications? there's something to be said for the search of knowledge for its own sake. and not knowing whether or not you will ever find an answer to a particular scientific question, or if you will succeed in a particular objective, is hardly a good reason for not even trying.
do you think the inventor of the first microscope knew beforehand that he was paving the way for the scientific field of microbiology? do you think the first bacteriologists knew that their pioneering work would eventually lead to the discovery of antibiotics and revolutionize modern medicine?
it's impossible to know exactly what consequences will follow the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that, whatever happens, it will have a profound impact on how humanity perceives itself and their relationship with the cosmos. whether we're alone in the universe is one of the fundamental questions of science, philosophy, and theology. just because answering it will not make computers run faster or cure cancer doesn't mean it's not worth asking.
To me, the Cray Jaguar is actually two machines: an XT4 cluster (which was around 400 Teraflop/s back in June) and the XT5 cluster. Cray completely redesigned the switching architecture, the memory management, and the cooling to create the XT5. The XT5 really is a completely different machine. Cray seem determined to take #1 spot, but combining the XT4 and XT5 clusters for a better overall measurement has the disadvantage of making the XT5 look less efficient.
IBM has retained the crown with a system that has fewer processors and uses half the energy. By comparison, the Jaguar is a lumbering beast that uses far more power and requires far more real estate. However, if you look at the performance of the XT5 alone, those figures get more competetive.
We can add those nine zeros straight over to get 41/3*10^61 years. Did I do that right?
Close enough. The bigger problem (yes, really) is that you'll be long out of energy even if you built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured 100% of its energy at 100% efficiency for the rest of its lifetime, since each operation requires at least kT/2 = 2*10^-23J under ideal conditions. Even at E=mc^2 you'll only get 8.6*10^69 = 2^233 operations out of the Sun. So even if you could build an ungodly massively parallel computer that could break AES256 in a reasonable time, you wouldn't have the power to operate it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings