The computer, which is installed at the American National Laboratory, reached the first place in the world in the new Top 500 ranking, which was published last night ● Fujitsu's supercomputer, which came first in the previous list, dropped to second place
The Blue Gene/Q computer manufactured by IBM, which is installed at the American Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was ranked as the most powerful computer in the world in the new Top 500 ranking, published last night (Monday).
The computer, which was nicknamed Sequoia, after the giant trees, shows a performance of 16.32 peta-flops and records an all-time record in processing speed. Each petaflop is a quadrillion mathematical operations per second.
The Sequoia system is primarily water-cooled and includes 98,304 processing nodes, 1.6 million cores and 1.6 petabytes of internal memory.
This processing power is crammed into 96 base cabinets, with a density 15 times higher than that of Fujitsu's computer, which held the previous record and dropped to second place in the current ranking. Fujitsu's computer is installed at the Computational Science Institute in Cuba-Japan. The higher density makes IBM's supercomputing cheaper and more accessible to new users, in a wide variety of applications. It is even based on the architecture of POWER processors.
In third place this year was ranked another IBM supercomputer, also Blue Gene/Q, nicknamed Mira, and it is installed at the National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois.
Fourth came the most powerful supercomputer in Europe: the iDataplex system, also from the blue giant, which goes by the name SuperMUC and is installed at the research center in Leibniz, Germany.
IBM owns the largest number of computers in the new Top 500 list. The list includes 213 systems (42.6%) of IBM compared to 138 systems (27.6%) of HP. After them are Cray, SGI and Bull.
Centers in the United States are the leading users of supercomputing systems, accounting for 253 of the 500 supercomputing systems on the list. 107 supercomputers are installed in Europe, mainly in Germany, Great Britain and France, and in Asia - 121, with most of them in China and Japan. IDC predicts that the supercomputer market will amount to more than 20 billion dollars this year.
Supercomputing is currently used in a wide range of applications, from processing and scientific research through complex simulations, building models and analytical analysis. Thus, for example, the Red Bull Formula racing team was able to improve the cars' performance by 20%, using design innovations that led to a reduction in the drag coefficient (air resistance to the car's movement).
Sequoia's advanced processing technology from IBM will allow nuclear researchers in the United States to run quantification applications under conditions of uncertainty - Uncertainty quantification. These conditions are used to evaluate the performance of nuclear weapons, for the purpose of extending the lifespan of increasingly obsolete weapons stockpiles. These technologies allow the United States to avoid for two decades the need to conduct nuclear tests during the testing processes of the nuclear weapons arsenal.
The list of the world's most powerful systems, Top500, is published once every six months by an independent research body, top500.org, which is led by researchers from the University of Mannheim in Germany and the Universities of Berkeley and Tennessee in the United States.
-
10 תגובות
to Anat
Regardless of the data you mentioned, it is possible that 20 years ago, when nuclear weapons were still relatively new, less computing power was needed for the types of simulations that were needed then, than what is needed now to test a nuclear weapon that is 20 years old. The computer simply has to take into account many deeper variables.
Assaf, regardless of Anat's message, the calculation usually referred to is the cost/power ratio, that is, what computing power you can buy each year for $1,000.
Indeed, today for $1,000 you can buy a computer (I'm not sure about smartphones, but it must be true about a desktop computer) that is 10 times more powerful than a computer you could buy for the same price 10 years ago (and the volume has also decreased greatly, a computer chip today contains a lot more transistors than a chip of the same size 10 years ago).
Anat,
The weakest supercomputer of 1993 reached a maximum of 13 gigaflops, I don't think your cell phone reaches 130...
Anat
As part of your theory, you also need to explain why Livermore Labs bought the computer, which according to what I understand, costs between 0.5 and 1 billion dollars.
And notes to the reporter/editor: it is better to write 15^10 instead of quadrillion. Quadrillion doesn't mean anything to me personally, and Peta is also a prefix that is (still) not used that much.
And one more thing, it's worth mentioning another important figure which is the efficiency of this computer (efficiency is one of the most important parameters in which supercomputers are measured): 3Gflops/W, which is 3 times more efficient than the previous supercomputer that was at the top of the list.
For example, in this project (called the "Human Brain Project" today), the most powerful supercomputer allows them to perform only a simulation of a tiny piece of brain that is a few millimeters in size. In order to simulate a whole brain (as they plan) they need a supercomputer with much, much higher performance.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/henry-markram-simulating-the-brain-next-decisive-years
The computing power of a supercomputer 20 years ago was perhaps sufficient for a basic simulation, but to perform much more complex simulations, with much higher resolutions (which will run in a shorter time!) there is a constant demand for greater computing power.
There are many simulations (for example in the fields of weather forecasting, protein folding, chemical and biological reactions, artificial intelligence and simulations of brain pieces) in which the more accurate the simulation, the more computing power is required which increases exponentially.
You can be 100% sure that there will always be computer programs and computer simulations that will take full advantage of the performance of these supercomputers.
To say that it is only for advertising is simply not true and indicates a lack of understanding.
The most powerful computer in the world belongs to God
Anat
I didn't quite understand how you came to the conclusions:
The fact that it is not surprising, (there are many unsurprising articles about things that are already known) means that it is a journalistic duck and if it is a journalistic duck its purpose is to publish IBM.
Let me prove to you why this article was written by a journalistic duck from IBM's advertising department
It says that thanks to this technology:
These technologies allow the United States to avoid for two decades the need to conduct nuclear tests during the testing processes of the nuclear weapons arsenal.
Two decades?
My cell phone today has a computing power 10 times stronger than the supercomputer that existed two decades ago (1992)
If yes, two decades ago with a supercomputer with the computing capacity of a cheap cell phone, there was enough technology to simulate a nuclear explosion.
So what is the purpose of the supercomputer and what is this supercomputer able to do that a server farm is not able to do and the answer is not as everyone thinks (nothing)
But: advertising
Yes the most powerful supercomputer in the world is able to advertise and press the best IBM in the world.
What a beautiful computer!!!