Supercomputer Advancement Slows?

kgeiger writes "In the Feb. 2011 issue of IEEE Spectrum online, Peter Kogge, an IEEE Fellow and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, outlines why we won't see exaflops computers soon. To start with, consuming 67 MW (an optimistic estimate) is going to make a lot of heat. He concludes, 'So don't expect to see a supercomputer capable of a quintillion operations per second appear anytime soon. But don't give up hope, either. [...] As long as the problem at hand can be split up into separate parts that can be solved independently, a colossal amount of computing power could be assembled similar to how cloud computing works now. Such a strategy could allow a virtual exaflops supercomputer to emerge. It wouldn't be what DARPA asked for in 2007, but for some tasks, it could serve just fine.'"

Comments

Re:Less of a matter of can't, but won't

[vbraga]

I don't know if this is true.

Weather modeling is still done on supercomputers.

Engineering applications needs high performance computing on a regular basis: geophysics (offshore oil, 4D seismic, ...), materials science (MD, ...), and others. There's also academical problems.

I've seen a lot of new HPC centers being built or getting new equipment in the last few years (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). From small CUDA clusters to heavy duty Cray systems (not in Rio, but nearby).