Exaflop Computers

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To close critical gaps between theoretical peak performance and actual performance on current supercomputers. The new method bolsters the continued relevance of Moore’s Law, to reduce the amount of power needed to run a future exascale computer.

1. Description

2. Why

3. How

4. Future Trends

5. Related Links

Description

Preparing groundwork for an exascale computer is the mission of the new Institute for Advanced Architectures, launched jointly at Sandia and Oak Ridge national laboratories.An exaflop is a thousand times faster than a petaflop, itself a thousand times faster than a teraflop. Teraflop computers —the first was developed 10 years ago at Sandia — currently are the state of the art. They do trillions of calculations a second. Exaflop computers would perform a million trillion calculations per second. 

Why 

Ultrafast supercomputers improve detection of real-world conditions by helping researchers more closely examine the interactions of larger numbers of particles over time periods divided into smaller segments.

  • An exaflop/s is 10^18 flop/s, which is a thousand times faster than a petaflop/s.
  • If computer speed kept advancing at its historical rate, then it would take about 15 years to go from a petaflop/s to an exaflop/s.
  • Moore's Law has held up remarkably well over many decades, and may apply for several more years.

After that, microprocessor feature sizes will become so small that the technological advances needed to achieve further increases in microprocessor speed will likely be subject to the economic law of diminishing returns. This will mean the end of Moore's Law, or at least a significant lengthening of the doubling time.An exascale computer is essential to perform more accurate simulations that, in turn, support solutions for emerging science and engineering challenges in national defense, energy assurance, advanced materials, climate, and medicine.

How

Processing speed refers to the rapidity with which a processor can manipulate data to solve its part of a larger problem. Data movement refers to the act of getting data from a computer’s memory to its processing chip and then back again. The larger the machine, the farther away from a processor the data may be stored and the slower the movement of data.

  • In an exascale computer, data might be tens of thousands of processors away from the processor that wants it.
  • Until that processor gets its data, it has nothing useful to do.
  • One key to scalability is to make sure all processors have something to work on at all times.

Compounding the problem is new technology that has enabled designers to split a processor into first two, then four, and now eight cores on a single die. Some special-purpose processors have 24 or more cores on a die. Dosanjh suggests there might eventually be hundreds operating in parallel on a single chip.Operating in parallel means that each core can work its part of the puzzle simultaneously with other cores on a chip, greatly increasing the speed a processor operates on data. The method does not require faster clock speeds, measured in faster gigahertz, which would generate unmanageable amounts of heat to dissipate as well as current leakage.The new method bolsters the continued relevance of Moore’s Law, the 1965 observation of Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors placed on a single computer chip will double approximately every two years.To reduce the amount of power needed to run a future exascale computer.A spontaneous demonstration of wide interest in faster computing was evidenced in the response to an invitation-only workshop, “Memory Opportunities for High-Performing Computing,” sponsored in January by the institute. 

Future Trends

“In order to continue to make progress in running scientific applications at these [very large] scales,” says Jeff Nichols, who heads the Oak Ridge branch of the institute, “we need to address our ability to maintain the balance between the hardware and the software. There are huge software and programming challenges and our goal is to do the critical R&D to close some of the gaps.”“The electrical power needed with today’s technologies would be many tens of megawatts — a significant fraction of a power plant. A megawatt can cost as much as a million dollars a year,” says Dosanjh. “We want to bring that down.”Sandia and Oak Ridge will work together on these and other problems, he says.“Although all of our efforts will be collaborative, in some areas Sandia will take the lead and Oak Ridge may lead in others, depending on who has the most expertise in a given discipline.” In addition, a key component of the institute will be the involvement of industry and universities. 

Keywords

'Exascale', supercomputer, Fastest Computer, one million trillion 'Flops' per second

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