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ARM In Supercomputers — 'Get Ready For the Change'
An anonymous reader writes "Commodity ARM CPUs are poised to to replace x86 CPUs in modern supercomputers just as commodity x86 CPUs replaced vector CPUs in early supercomputers. An analysis by the EU Mountblanc Project (PDF) (using Nvidia Tegra 2/3, Samsung Exynos 5 & Intel Core i7 CPUs) highlights the suitability and energy efficiency of ARM-based solutions. They finish off by saying, 'Current limitations [are] due to target market condition — not real technological challenges. ... A whole set of ARM server chips is coming — solving most of the limitations identified.'"
Most of the actual processing power in current supercomputers comes from GPUs, not CPUs. There are exceptions (that all-SPARC Japanese one, or a few Cell-based ones), but they're just that, exceptions.
So sure, replace the Xeons and Opterons with Cortex-A15s. Doesn't really change much.
What might be interesting is a GPU-heavy SoC - some light CPU cores on the die of a supercomputer-class GPU. I have heard Nvidia is working on such (using Tegra CPUs and Tesla GPUs), and I would not be surprised if AMD is as well, although they'd be using one of their x86 cores for it (probably Bulldozer - damn thing was practically built for heavily-virtualized servers, not much different from supercomputers).
Damage or a winner? I feel so bad about having a cheap, efficient, and above all, quiet box.
I bought this 4*2GHz baby, and the only reason it's not my main desktop yet is a weird and asinine requirement for monitor resolution to be exactly 720 or 1080 (WTF?!?). I think I'll replace my old but perfectly working pair of 1280x1024 monitors (I hate 16x9!), and put the big loud clunker to the cellar. I just hate the noise so much. x86 machines with no moving parts are extremely hard to get, and have terrible performance/price. Anything that requires lots of processing power: compilation, running Windows VMs, etc, can be done remotely from the cellar just as well, while a 2GHz arm is fast enough to do client stuff, running a browser being the most demanding part.
And what else do you need to reside directly on the machine you plop your butt at?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
As I understand it, Intel still has the advantage in the performance per watt category for general processing and GPUs have better performance per watt IF you can optimize for that specific environment--both things which have been commented to death endlessly by people far more knowledgeable than I.
However, to me there are at least 3 questions unanswered:
1. ASICs (and possibly FPGAs): Bitcoin miners and DES breakers are the best known examples. Where is the dividing line between where your operations are specific enough to emply an ASIC vs not specific enough and needing a GPU (or even CPU)? Could further optimization move this line more toward the ASIC?
2. Huge dies: This has been talked about before, but it seems that, for applications that are embarrassingly parallel, this is clearly where the next revolution will be, with hundreds of cores (at least, and of whatever kind of "core" you want). So when will this stop being vaporware?
3. But what do we do about all the NON-parallel jobs? If you can't apply an ASIC and you can't break it down, you're still stuck at the basic wall we've been at for around a decade now: where's Moore's (performance) law here? It would seem the only hope is new algorithms: TRUE computer science!
The problem you have is the software tools you use sap the power of the hardware. Windows is engineered to consume cycles to drive their need for recurrent license fees. Try a different OS that doesn't have this handicap and you'll find the full power of the equipment is available.
Help stamp out iliturcy.