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Japan's 8-petaflop K Computer Is Fastest On Earth
Stoobalou writes "An eight-petaflop Japanese supercomputer has grabbed the title of fastest computer on earth in the new Top 500 Supercomputing List to be officially unveiled at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg today. The K Computer is based at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, and smashes the previous supercomputing records with a processing power of more than 8 petaflop/s (quadrillion calculations per second) — three times that of its nearest rival."
So it's faster than the Crays on the list, the nearest competitors?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
the NSA has it's own chip fab
640K cores is enough for anyone.
Anyone here who find that 'quadrillion' is more descriptive than peta? (or 1e15, for that matter?).
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... wait. Are we still doing that? OK, now I feel old. In Slashdot years.
For supercomputers, it seems at least once a year something doubles. For desktop computers... Mine is 4 years old and still similar in specs to PCs that are being sold today.
The article misses out who built it... Fujitsu did, and it's nice to be proud of the company you work for and that my colleagues in Japan achieved something rather cool :)
Oh, and it's not finished yet :)
Did you post that just to be able to use the word that is in your sig?
Better than Chinese slave labor.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Are you joking? Firefox is "faster" every version!!! (Req: faster computer)
Sure the Singularity and Computer Sentience cannot be far-off now. Yay. A faster computer. I guess this is news for today but this is 'dog bites man' stuff. Tomorrow the sun will rise again and there will be a faster computer than this one. Yawn
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
peace is not a static state of being. peace is a balanced state of tension between armed foes. war is a disruption in this equilibrium that is then restored. the goal of maintaining peace is to not have any sudden shocks to the status quo
you will never, ever, have a world where peace is simply a static state of being that requires no armed maintenance. why? human nature is why
show me a place where everyone is unarmed and peaceful, and i'll show you a warlord's pillaging grounds
sorry, but this is reality. stop asking for things that don't exist, and never will, as long as human beings are human beings
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your brain, which runs on a few tens of watts and weighs as much as your laptop, has a 10 gigabyte "hello world". you chose the wrong measure for efficiency.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Here are some images of the system, which currently uses 672 cabinets and uses about 10 megawatts of power. The K system is more powerful than the next 5 systems combined. It's a big-ass system.
Can anyone tell us the most recent accepted figure for human brain emulation in petaflops and terrabytes of memory?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
According to wikipedia, K Computer (or Kobe Computer) refers to cuts of computer from the Tajima-ushi breed of Wagyu semiconductors, raised according to strict tradition in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. The output from such computers is generally considered to be a delicacy, renowned for its flavour, tenderness, and fatty, well-marbled texture.
Might want to review the top 10 list again. The fastest supercomputer in the USA is Jaguar at ORNL. Much of it's CPU time is dedicated towards energy research -- biofuels, cellulosic ethanol, that sort of thing,. . .
It is using Sparc CPUs and no GPUs. I wonder if Oracle is watching? It will be interesting to see since they now own the Zombie formally known as Sun.
So when are we going to see nVidia get into this game with ARM+GPU based super computer?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So there are faster computers on some other planet somewhere?
I might think about ordering one of those instead, except shipping cost (and time ) would be a problem, and my credit card would expire before they got the order (the speed of light is a bitch)
Japan does have a nuclear weapons program. It is just sleeping. If/when the US withdraws its naval forces from the defense of Japan, perhaps due to pressure from China, japan can be mass producing nuclear weapons in just a few months.
so that's approx. 100 Gflop per sparc cpu. (double precision?)
what can a high end xeon do ?
Absolutely nothing , they are using it for the "lulz" and bitcoin farming, and troll feeding on mondays.
the top 500 is based upon the Linpack benchmark and it is not really a good reflection on 'how fast' a super computer really is. Newer benchmarks, such as graph500 and NAS parallel benchmarks try to make the benchmark more real world. But if all you plan to do is solve linear equations then I guess Linpack is your thing.
Seymour Cray would be rolling in his grave if he heard you talking about his beloved supercomputers as if they were glorified refrigerators.
Oh.... wait.... Never Mind.
I wonder how many bitcoins this monster can mine per hour lol?
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
What I don't quite get - and maybe someone can enlighten me - is how they keep 80K compute nodes going. Even with very reliable hardware, several of these nodes will fail each day. The massively parallel codes I work with (MD) can't deal with a compute node going out. Do other massively parallel codes have a way to deal with this sort of thing? This seems to be a big challenge for parallel computing. When you have a code and problem that can use several thousand nodes, hardware failure will be a daily occurrence. Incidentally, I've had the opportunity to use several thousand cpus in one go. Before New Mexico's Encanto was released for general use I was one of several people that had access to the machine. There really wasn't a problem running million or billion atom systems over several thousand cpus. But this was just brief benchmarking runs. Not data production.
46 & 2
But does it run BSD?
I8-D
That is, you want the unrankable Tianhe-1 GPU "show computer".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It is also true that the US is spending about ten times more on the military than is needed for peace. It is also true that in the US we use capitol letters and periods to make things easier to reads.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
But will it blend?
Could most certainly ray-trace Crysis in real-time. This is a beast of note.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
We spend that much to make absolutely sure that there won't be any war, and so far it's been working great. Except for radical islam, Afganistan, Lybia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, ...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
penismeasuringcontest
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Hah - I just started a ~10000 proc job on the machine sitting in position 99....
I also regularly run jobs on Jaguar (#3)....
The advances in supercomputing in the last year have been simply astounding. GPUs are changing the game of course.... but the density of CPUs is getting insane. Being able to plug 4x12 core processors into a 1U mobo is getting crazy. Can't wait to see where it goes in the next year!
Costa Rica.
If they mean the fastest computer we've ever made to date, why don't they just say that instead of using a qualifier like "on earth" which implicates a specifically limited scope on account of an awareness of something faster elsewhere?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Even the story seems to think that you're cheating if you use a GPU - when in fact, depending on the problems you're trying to solve, use of GPUs can make your computer more power-efficient, less expensive, and faster. OK, sure, if you want to argue that not every algorithm will map efficiently to a GPU, I'll accept that argument. But then you have to grant me the reverse argument; not every algorithm maps efficiently to CPUs. The problem in thinking here is just that the CPU is the "correct" way to do things, and sometimes you can "cheat" and use a GPU to do it faster. In reality, some problems just need parallel horsepower, and that's what the GPU excels at. Don't believe me? Well, here are some examples: Graphics (duh - why do you think they make GPUs?), n-body simulations (just need lots of number crunching here), and LINPACK (if you believe the people that complain that the GPU gets an unfair advantage - when really, the CPU is just at a disadvantage because of its architecture).
There can be a hurdle in learning how to rewrite your code to take advantage of the GPU, some of which might still be hanging around from the 1970s. But if you're going to spend millions of dollars on a new computer, you probably also have millions of dollars to spend on the research that you'll be doing on it. And if you've saved some of those millions of dollars by choosing GPUs over, say, 10x as many CPUs, then you can spend some of what you've saved (and will continue to save in lower power bills) on a programmer or two.
I don't intend this to attack the K Computer itself - hopefully, its architects listened closely to what the researchers wanted when designing it, and chose CPUs because they were the right choice for the programs that will be running on the computer. But the article (and some observers) seem rather biased, rather than recognizing that both CPUs and GPUs have strengths, and a supercomputer that includes both will likely be better at many problems than a computer that doesn't.
Of course, there's also the argument that *everything* on the Top500 list is biased, and not just the systems with GPUs, because not everybody's problem looks anything like LINPACK. So sometimes, something that's neither a CPU nor a GPU is the best choice (and whatever that something is might not run LINPACK well) - which is a very valid observation as well.
Wasn't there an article recently about China's world's fastest supercomputer, and no competition in site for the next several years? Or did I fall asleep at my seak for several years?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
costa rica's famous nonmilitary has to with the unpopularity of a costa rican military dictator who was overthrown in the 1940s. the military was hated as a source of the dictator's support. so the military was "disbanded" to much fanfare (and little substance): you see, of course, costa rica DOES have a military: law enforcement, foreign peacekeeping troops, etc. the famous propaganda that you believe is just an entertaining narrative of the reaction of the people and politicians of costa rica to the military in the 1940s, due the hated deposed dictator. the myth has no reflection in reality
and you forgot another great myth: the amish. it's easy to preach nonviolence when one in embedded in the middle of a militaristic country: your peace is provided for, so you don't have to provide for it. your peaceful philosophy is therefore a parasitical arrangement with your host country, not a whole, genuine philosophy that can stand on its own. for example, if you were to transport the amish to say, the caucasus mountains, one or two things would happen:
1. the extinction of the amish
2. the all-new improved well-armed amish
likewise, costa rica benefits from the usa's umbrella interest in keeping the status quo in latin america. it's easy to have a lackadaisical military if your peace is guaranteed by someone else. for example, if nicaragua or panama went nuts and started making inroads into costa rica, costa rica would beg the usa for military aid, and/ or bulk up it's existing military
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The fastest computers are 100,000x faster in 25 years. But the typical problem in my discipline (seismic) is a 4D grid. If you increase the side of a grid 18x to the fourth power, then you reach 100,000. I was at a conference earlier month where people are still talking about tricks like custom hardware (GPUs) and data compression to squeeze ever larger problems into supercomputers. This aspect has not changed since I went to grad school a quarter century ago.
although it should give SkyNet a run for its money.
I doubt they will, since the SPARC's in this are totally different than the SPARC's in any commercial system. Almost all of the floating-point oomph is provided by massive vector units using an instruction set that isn't (and probably will never be) part of standard SPARC.
The K computer is able to do work more efficiently than GPUs because it uses a very power-efficient core, the Sun VIIIfx. If you peel the onion, it seems like the real reason for energy efficiency is special purpose units and the HPC-ACE instructions. I did a quick investigation of what this core has (and what it doesn't) to make it so energy efficient. It may be an interesting read for some of you guys so leaving a link here: http://bit.ly/kTvvDE
someone above is talking about a Cray being the fastest
A few decades back, Cray was kept in business solely because the NSA funded him. He had no other customer to support his stuff.
These 'private companies' with their 'general purpose computers' are often linked to secret government projects in ways we will not understand or know about for decades.
the NSA has been on the forefront of computer technology for it's whole existence practically.
almost nobody had ever heard of it before the mid 1970s.
there was no book about it until circa 1980, and only a handful of books since then
and yet, it singlehandedly is responsible for a large amount of supercomputer development in the US.
and it is part of the Department of Defense
i mean, people keep saying there could be 'peace' between those states, but it was only a short time ago, 150 years, that those to 'peaceful' states were killing each other.
every nation practically has a peace movement sooner or later.
it's endemic to the human species to have anti-war movements.
so which is really the 'steady state'... the desire for war or the desire for peace, which is behind just about every major religion?
i mean in the world. sorry.
Peace can be a static state of being, most countries are not in a "balanced state of tension between armed foes." You're describing something like the relationship between Israel and Iran, would you say that's the same relationship shared between countries in the Americas or Europe?
The whole world isn't in one giant Mexican standoff.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
show me a place where everyone is unarmed and peaceful, and i'll show you a warlord's pillaging grounds
the kingdom of Bhutan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed_forces
At least 3.6 --> 4 was faster (as in more efficient, regardless of computer speed).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
yes, the whole world is in a giant mexican standoff
where areas of the world are at peace, they are at standoff with other areas of the world. this isn't to say peace isn't impossible without land wars. conflict is inevitable, war is not. within a country, the police keep things from descending into physical violence, and the courts resolve conflicts verbally. this is as close as you get to peace on a global basis, or within and maybe even between a handful of nation blocs like ASEAN or the EU, should they congeal further and invest more common destiny in with their neighbors
as i hope they do: in the case of europe, a continent famous for hundreds of bloody wars killing millions, there is only peace today: there is hope. but it's a fraught financial marriage, not a political one, which it must evolve into, without fragmenting
if peace is to be achieved, it is with a rational reading of human nature, not a castle in the sky way of thinking. that is: a police force to keep those who always try violence to a simmering minimum, and courts used to resolve conflict. in this "perfect" world, the only war that will be left will be street level gang stuff, which is the nucleus for all larger wars, and therefore must always be maintained at a minimization, constant effort, or the street gangs will metastasize and we will have warlords across the countryside
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Japan is considered to be 6-12 months from a weaponized thermonuclear warhead if they decided they wanted on.
They also have a Peacekeeper/SS-25 class rocket that could be weaponized quite easily.
http://www.largeassociates.com/R3126-A1-%20final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_program#De_facto_nuclear_state
Cutting the US defense budget by 90% would strip the entire US military down to something just a little bigger than the current US Marine Corps or a little smaller than the French Armed Forces.
The United States does not spend all that to insure there won't be any way. The US spends all that and has that giant military established to "provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country."
http://www.defense.gov/about/#mission
There wasn't peace in Europe three years ago when Georgia and Russia fought. Nor was there peace in Europe during the Madrid or the London bombings.
Nor was there peace in Europe from 1991 to 1999 when the Balkans were at war.
Ingushetia and Chechnya are still at war, both of which are on the European continent.
Generally, countries without armies have official defense treaties with other countries that do have armies. The US, would defend Costa Rica and other countries in the Americas and Pacific, France would defend Monaco, and Australia would defend many Pacific countries. Others are unofficial, such as everybody knows the Italian Army would defend the Vatican were it attacked.
Bhutan, having a small standing army, is not one of them, although India would protect them should the Chinese decide to invade.
then why did hitler kill all of them?
why waste the time?
I'm not so impressed with the "world's fastest computer" schtick. Take a CPU/GPU with more cores, add a couple of cabinets, and there you go - world's fastest computer (with all due respect to the hardware engineers who put these things together).
The tricky part is figuring out how to divide your particular problem up so you can actually keep those 100,000-odd cores working, not waiting for intermediate results from other cores.
And if you thin it's difficult now, in ten years from now the world's fastest supercomputer will probably have something in the order of a billion (thousand million) cores.
But then again, your average PC (or smartphone) may well have hundreds of CPU cores on it, and today's average CS student won't have a clue how to take advantage of that architecture.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I think that this is far more important than the comparison with the chinese machine, since this means that there is serious competition again in the high end market.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
The aspirations of these supercomputer builders knows no bounds. They build an 8 petaflop system, and think the computer is just K. 80 petaflops will probably just be OK, and 800 might be A-OK.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.