Slashdot Mirror
Japan Unveils Next-Generation, Pascal-Based AI Supercomputer (nextplatform.com)
The Tokyo Institute of Technology has announced plans to launch Japan's "fastest AI supercomputer" this summer. The supercomputer is called Tsubame 3.0 and will use Nvidia's latest Pascal-based Tesla P100 GPU accelerators to double its performance over its predecessor, the Tsubame 2.5. Slashdot reader kipperstem77 shares an excerpt from a report via The Next Platform: With all of those CPUs and GPUs, Tsubame 3.0 will have 12.15 petaflops of peak double precision performance, and is rated at 24.3 petaflops single precision and, importantly, is rated at 47.2 petaflops at the half precision that is important for neural networks employed in deep learning applications. When added to the existing Tsubame 2.5 machine and the experimental immersion-cooled Tsubame-KFC system, TiTech will have a total of 6,720 GPUs to bring to bear on workloads, adding up to a total of 64.3 aggregate petaflops at half precision. (This is interesting to us because that means Nvidia has worked with TiTech to get half precision working on Kepler GPUs, which did not formally support half precision.)
Am I the only one that thought "LISP machines, okay, but Pascal?"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And here I was hoping that the "Pascal" was the language and that maybe they were finally realizing that decades of language and OS development have been going in the completely wrong direction. What we need is a UCSD Pascal powered supercomputer.
I can get out my Turbo Pascal box again!
Run Doom maxed out or nah?
Had no idea KFC was active in the AI field. Good Job, Kernel Sanders.
That is actually the first thing that sprang to mind, even though I had been looking specifically at Pascal based GPU's recently. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I used to use Pascal a lot back in my college days, mostly on mini-computers. Other than a brief burst of sales in Turbo Pascal (PC) and to a lessor extent Delphi, Pascal usage quickly shrank. I'm not quite sure why, it was a fairly decent compiler-based language.
It needed more string-oriented operations, perhaps. I like the way the type name (declaration) comes after the variable, instead of before like the C-family of languages. I prefer it after. It also allowed nesting of functions.
Table-ized A.I.
These P100 come with sweet HBM2 and around 500GB/s in memory bandwidth... everything based on dense linear algebra (AI, but also physics simulations) is basically flying on them.
I'm sorry, but I like my KFC hot from the fryer. This experiment should end immediately.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I am going to make make a supercomputer that runs on BASIC A.
What were they thinking? I guess the product is better than the name if it's gaining traction, but for the love of God, fix the name. There's one thing in computing that's Pascal, and these chips are not it.
Of course Kepler should support it with software, at the same speed as single precision. The selected implementations of Pascal brought the speedier half precision support to the table.
APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/
Ads/malware rob speed/security/privacy
Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).
Less power/cpu/ram + IO vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!
* Via what you NATIVELY have built in the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!
Hosted/recommended by Malwarebytes' hpHosts + code verified safe by 'em.
APK
P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/ & No security issue/bug in it since 2012 release & virus proof HyperAlloy Combat Chassis - Microprocessor controlled: Fully Armored, VERY tough code construction... apk
our product which is celebrating it's 30th anniversary, is written in Delphi. Now, it will finally be able to understand what it's purpose in the world is.
Pascal, the GPU design. Not Pascal, the language.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
to open in japan :)
I think I'm one of few people that actual likes Pascal. Also prefer Python over JAVA and never really cared for C all that much even though there are similarities. Anyone like or use MyNotex (Linux)? Written in with Pascal. ;)
What were they thinking? I guess the product is better than the name if it's gaining traction, but for the love of God, fix the name. There's one thing in computing that's Pascal, and these chips are not it.
Here at Nvidia we unfortunately suffer from marketing sometimes being lazy and by default naming some products the same as our internal project code names to avoid being confusing.
FWIW, Blaise Pascal's first published written work was called, Essay on Conic Sections. The writings constituted an important advance in projective geometry, (representing a 3-D object onto a 2-D field). Perhaps a reasonable internal codename for a 3d graphics chip project? Arguable. A name collision? Unfortunate. Are concept name collisions uncommon with prolific scientists? No. For example Galios, Gauss, Euler, etc
It's not like computing doesn't do stuff like that all the time. Witness JavaScript and C-shell... JavaScript is definitely not Java and C-shell is definitely not C.
As of now there are very few applications for massively souped up GPU processes. Fluid mechanics loves this GPU. Navier-Stokes is probably the most difficult equation to solve, agreed. But it is hyperbolic, with limited "zone of influence", and numerical equations are quite simple, just mass, momentum and energy balances in the control volume. It plays well in GPU, the calculations fit inside the teensy memory and processor. All time domain problems are hyperbolic and they all can be ported to GPU, theoretically. But try squeezing Maxwell's Equations into that teensy processor!
Graphics card companies are desperately looking for new markets and they keep pushing this. They might as well push a wet noodle across the table. It ain't gonna go nowhere it didn't wanna go.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Making all the other supercomputers Wirth-less.
My spoon is too big.
One it was realized you could mechanically translate Pascal to C, then compile the C and get a 2-3x speed up (compared to interpreting p-code), Pascal started dying.
C has issues, but in practice it has less of them than Pascal, so the resulting code was easy to tweak to get even more performance.
Delphi.. Ohhh such wonderful memories..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
And you probably prefer your KFC to be chicken and not swallow, which is what Tsubame means.
Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta; who's next?
Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta; who's next?
If you can find someone who *broke the code*, you will be rewarded with the answer. ;^)
I could tell you, but then you'd be pushing up daisies too
10 REM Jeez!! Imagine if you had to program an artificial intelligence using line numbers and goto statements.
Precisely so. Well played. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
To name a computer system, Tsubame-KFC, after Kentucky Fried Chicken, the experimental immersion-cooled system and Tsubame "Swallow" maybe not the Bird but the action verb, is Genius.
Ja ja
> One it was realized you could mechanically translate Pascal to C, then compile the C and get a 2-3x speed up (compared to interpreting p-code), Pascal started dying.
The gains were not so great. After all, p-code was gradually replaced by very efficient compilers (like Turbo Pascal and later, Delphi). It would be interesting to look at some more recent benchmarks...
There was that emphasis on compile performance and runtime speed was less of a worry; with C, it was the opposite, compilation was much slower, but the final executable could be finely tuned -- like you say in "the resulting code was easy to tweak to get even more performance". This was absolutely fundamental for games, graphical programs, CAD and other CPU-intensive tasks.
And by trying to be good at tasks where performance was less important, Pascal had also to face Java as a competitor.