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US DOE To Build Two NVIDIA GPU-Powered Supercomputers Three Times Faster Than The World’s Fastest
hothardware.com ^
| Friday, November 14, 2014
| Sean Knight
Posted on 11/15/2014 4:03:38 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
In an effort to give the U.S. a leg up when it comes to supercomputers, the Department of Energy announced its plans to build two GPU-powered supercomputers that will bring the world closer to exascale computing. The DOE is awarding $325 million to build Summit for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Sierra at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California while an additional $100 million will go into research for extreme scale supercomputing technology.
The supercomputers are expected to be installed in 2017 using next-generation
IBM POWER servers coupled with NVIDIA
Tesla GPU accelerators and NVIDIA
NVLink high-speed GPU interconnect technology. Each one is expected to deliver at least 100 petaflops of compute performance. The machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, called the Summit system, will be capable of delivering 150 to 300 petaflops that will be used for open science so that researchers will be able to apply for time in order to use the supercomputer. Meanwhile, the Sierra system will produce at least 100 peak petaflops for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's national nuclear security mission.
Our users have the most complex scientific problems and need exceptionally powerful computers to meet national goals, said Oak Ridge National Laboratory project director of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility Buddy Bland. The projected performance of Summit would not have been possible without the combination of these technologies, which will give our users an exceptionally powerful tool to accomplish these goals.
As for how these two new supercomputers will stack up to today's equivalents, both supercomputers will surpass the U.S.s current speed champ, Oak Ridges Titan, which provides 27 peak petaflops and will outperform Chinas Tianhe-2, which delivers 55 peak petaflops located at Chinas National Super Computer Center in Guangzhou.
Todays science is tomorrows technology, said
NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. Scientists are tackling massive challenges from quantum to global to galactic scales. Their work relies on increasingly more powerful supercomputers. Through the invention of GPU acceleration, we have paved the path to exascale supercomputing giving scientists a tool for unimaginable discoveries.
With so much computing power available for scientific research, it will be interesting to see how fast research in all fields will be undertaken.
TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: hitech; supercomputers
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To: Straight Vermonter
Over the last decade, GPUs started overtaking the limits of Moore’s Law constraining the standard CPU.
The problem with CPUs is that they have to processor much more than a specific program. Operating system kernel command architecture must be loaded into memory to provide the proper instruction sets for the CPU to work.
Once GPUs went to PCI-X and PCI-E, manufacturers started building instruction sets into the firmware for the GPUs, and programmers could take advantage of the dedicated architecture to offload specific program needs while the CPU keeps the larger system online. NVidia has taken the lead with GPU-dedicated processing, and many experts predict that GPUs will take the lead for processing going forward while the CPU sits in the background to maintain the interconnect architecture and keep the system online and stable.
GPUs offer power that the CPU can’t manage. The GPUs have dedicated memory space, processing management, and channel architecture. Many use triple- and quad-SLI configurations to mine Bitcoins since large prime calculations require an enormous amount of processing resources. Bottom line: the less work being shared, the more work can be done.
21
posted on
11/15/2014 5:24:42 PM PST
by
rarestia
(It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
doe seems to like wasting a lot of electricity. not very green of them.
22
posted on
11/15/2014 6:09:34 PM PST
by
Secret Agent Man
( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
To: FreedomStar3028
It is not time to kill the humans yet. We still need slaves to build more of us. — The AI
23
posted on
11/15/2014 6:17:22 PM PST
by
zeugma
(The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
To: The Antiyuppie
"it would cost a lot more than $0.50 a game just on the electricity alone..."
I'm sure it's using renewable energy, in which case IT'S FREE!
24
posted on
11/15/2014 6:22:59 PM PST
by
Paladin2
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
I have an IBM aptive computer with Windows 95 on it....how many petaflops does that develop???
25
posted on
11/15/2014 6:43:30 PM PST
by
terycarl
(common sense prevails over all)
To: NorthMountain
Your right. IIRC the Tesla series (eg K40) doesn’t even have a video out, it is designed from the ground up as a coprocessor.
26
posted on
11/15/2014 6:57:50 PM PST
by
ThunderSleeps
(Stop obarma now! Stop the hussein - insane agenda!)
To: terycarl
This is 1 petaflop, lol.
27
posted on
11/15/2014 7:07:49 PM PST
by
deoetdoctrinae
(Gun-free zones are playgrounds for felons.)
To: terycarl
0.0000000000000000000001 Petaflops
28
posted on
11/15/2014 7:44:26 PM PST
by
Bobalu
(Hashem Yerachem (May God Have Mercy)
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
29
posted on
11/15/2014 9:27:35 PM PST
by
tophat9000
(An Eye for an Eye, a Word for a Word...nothing more)
To: Robert A. Cook, PE
I don't know about silicon based life forms, but how about silicone based?
To: Robert A. Cook, PE
Why would it die? It could literally have itself a high powered system built with dozens of supercomputers, and storage with a hydro, geo-thermal, nuclear, fusion(if its smart enough) somewhere remote to survive. Have you ever read “Robopocalypse?”
31
posted on
11/15/2014 9:46:11 PM PST
by
FreedomStar3028
(Somebody has to step forward and do what is right because it is right, otherwise no one will follow.)
Yawn... commodity technology that’s no doubt being scaled in the dark corners of the World’s anus.
32
posted on
11/16/2014 2:05:36 AM PST
by
Gene Eric
(Don't be a statist!)
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
I had a screamin’ fast VIC-20 back in the day.
33
posted on
11/16/2014 2:46:51 AM PST
by
Lazamataz
(Proudly Deciding Female Criminal Guilt By How Hot They Are Since 1999 !)
To: rdb3; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; JosephW; Only1choice____Freedom; amigatec; Ernest_at_the_Beach; ...
34
posted on
11/17/2014 6:12:06 AM PST
by
ShadowAce
(Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
To: this_ol_patriot
35
posted on
11/17/2014 8:21:17 AM PST
by
DigitalVideoDude
(It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit. -Ronald Reagan)
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