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$208 Million Petascale Computer Gets Green Light
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 03, 2008 05:46 PM
from the that's-a-lot-of-solitaire dept.
from the that's-a-lot-of-solitaire dept.
coondoggie writes "The 200,000 processor core system known as Blue Waters got the green light recently as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) said it has finalized the contract with IBM to build the world's first sustained petascale computational system.
Blue Waters is expected to deliver sustained performance of more than one petaflop on many real-world scientific and engineering applications. A petaflop equals about 1 quadrillion calculations per second. They will be coupled to more than a petabyte of memory and more than 10 petabytes of disk storage. All of that memory and storage will be globally addressable, meaning that processors will be able to share data from a single pool exceptionally quickly, researchers said. Blue Waters, is supported by a $208 million grant from the National Science Foundation and will come online in 2011."
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imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
$208 Million Petascale Computer Gets Green Light (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine having all that computer power, and not even knowing if it was switched on!
You know, that IS impressive but... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Naive question... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's awesome, but are there any concrete advancements that can be attributed to having access to all this computing power?
Just wondering...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I mean, what do they actually use this for?
I think it has been designed to run IE8 beta 2.
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Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Funny)
Come on now. Let's be serious. They're trying to play Crysis.
Parent
Re:Naive question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you know that a very credible FAQ mentions Apple purchased a Cray for manufacturing/design and someone actually saw them emulate MacOS on that monster?
http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/CrayWWWStuff/Cfaqp3.html#TOC23 [pipex.com]
I bet they tried some games too :)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Now now.. lets be totally fair.. They're trying to play Crysis on Vista!
Re:Naive question... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't use one myself, but I know people involved with supercomptuers. They are used for large simulations. Often this comes down to solving large systems of linear equations, since at the inner step finite elements need solutions to these large equation systems. The point is, the larger the computer the larger the grid you can have. This involves simulating a larger volume, or simulating the same volume in more detail (think, for example of weather systems).
As for concrete advancemants? I'm not in the biz, so I don't know, but I expect so. Apparently they're also used for stellar simulations, so I expect the knowledge of the universe has been advanced. I would be suprised if they haven't seen duty in global warming simulation too.
Parent
Or (Score:3, Informative)
Simulating nuclear explosions.
Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Informative)
Weather modeling comes to mind, both terrestrial and space.
rj
Parent
Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Informative)
These machines are used to work on simulations that involve aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, quantum electrodynamics (QED), or electromagnetohydrodynamics. All of these simulations require that a mathematical model is constructed from a high density mesh of data points (2048 ^ 3). Blocks of such points are allocated to individual processors. Because of this, each processor must be able to communicate at a high speed with its neighbours (up to 26 neighbours with a cubic mesh).
Usually, the actual individual calculations per element will be take up less than a page of mathematical equations, but require high precision, so the data values will be 64-bit floating point quantities. A single element might require 20 or more variables. Thus the need for some many processors and high clock speed.
Parent
Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Funny)
And quantum electroptical tomographics. See, I can make shit up, too...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I know this is probably a very naive question, but has anyone here actually had the privilege of working on one of these things? I mean, what do they actually use this for?
The one application I know this computer is going to run is quantum Monte Carlo [wikipedia.org], which is an electronic-structure method. QMC is intrinsically parallel due to its stochastic nature, but the degree of parallelism involved here requires further breakdown of the algorithm. There are quite a few research groups putting effort into this.
Other applications, if I am not mistaken, are also meant to be highly parallelizable, possibly nearing the boundary of embarrasingly parallel [wikipedia.org] tasks. This is probably to make sure
Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Informative)
Do you notice neither USA or Russia blows a portion of planet to test nuclear weapons anymore? It is because the planet is so peaceful so further research is not required? Unfortunately no.
These monsters can simulate a gigantic nuclear explosion in molecular level.
Or for peace purposes, they can actually simulate that New Orleans storm based on real World data and pinpoint exactly what would happen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Right.
That's why the City of New Orleans evacuated to Baton Rouge.
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Think of the number of open tabs you could use in Google's new Chrome Browser! With separate processes for each tab, they could have the internet open at once!
Re:Naive question... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm working on a PhD in chemical engineering, and I do simulations. I occasionally use Lonestar and Ranger, which are clusters at TACC, the U. of Texas' supercomputing center. Lonestar is capable of around 60 TFLOPS and Ranger can do around 500-600 TFLOPS. A few users run really large jobs using thousands of cores for days at a stretch, but the majority of people use 128 or fewer cores for a few hours at a time.
My research group does materials research using density function theory, which is an approximate way of solving the Schroedinger equation. Each of our jobs usually uses 16 or 32 cores, and takes anywhere from 5 minutes to a couple of days to finish. Usually we are interested in looking at lots of slightly different cases, so we run dozens of jobs simultaneously.
The applications are pretty varied. Some topics we are working on -
1) Si nanowire growth
2) Si self-interstitial defects
3) Au cluster morphology
4) Catalysis by metal clusters
5) Properties of strained semiconductors
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For a reasonable sample of the things that can be done on a supercomputer, start here: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Projects/ [uiuc.edu]. Those are just the things running at NCSA.
Followup with this [teragrid.org], as the science gateways for the TeraGrid are designed to let scientists worry more about the science part and less about the programming part. Part of the reason to build bigger supercomputers is to let non-programmers get work done as well. By having more cycles available, the TeraGrid can allow access for codes that are e
How many human brains is that? (Score:2)
Apparently, by 2020, personal computers will have the same processing power of the human brain (Kurzweil 2005). My personal computer has 2 cores, my friend's personal computer has 8 cores, so let's say 4 cores is an average. Cores double every, what, 18 months? In the next 12 years there's 144 months, which is 8 doublings. So what's that, 1024 cores? So this computer is, clearly, 195 times smarter than a human!
Or maybe raw processing power just isn't a good indication of how near or far the Singularity
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There are others limits to the systems power like the ram bandwidth and size / HD size and speed.
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Hehe, actually, the problem is a lack of *software*.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
2020 seems unlikely. A reasonably accurate real-time synaptic simulation can run maybe 100 neurons on a high end pc today, probably less. A human brain has about 100 billion neurons, so we're 1 billion times short in computation. Last time I checked, GPUs had not yet been used in neuron simulation, so I'll even give you that we may be 1000 times better off. That's still 1 million X improvement needed to match the brain, or roughly 20 more generations of computer hardware, at a generous 18 months, that l
More crap code (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it funny how the people who have never been formally trained with writing in a language (Mathematics, and just science in general) write the best codes while the majority of the IT people I see write the most appalling code I've ever seen. I think it has something to do with the fact that the science people don't pretend to know everything and are much more willing to learn something new while the IT people already know everything.
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The Cray FAQ mentions super computers running on 99% load all the time . I think they still don't have the luxury to waste memory. It is just the programs they run actually needs/will need such a massive memory.
I understand your point but I don't think they let "buy more RAM" idiots to use such super computing power.
Remember the Mathematica on OS X was the first 64bit enabled code on PPC G5 since they (scientists) actually needed maxed out G5s (8 GB and 16GB on Quad G5).
but will it run... (Score:2)
Vista fast enough?
Oh I forgot, that would cost 200 peta-dollars,
so maybe they won't use vista.
Star Trek "Data" rated at 60 Teraflops (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Demonstration of the triumph of software over hardware!
I believe it was Minsky who said that a 486 could run a human level intelligence, if only we knew the algorithm, but I can't seem to remember where he said it. Maybe I need new RAM!
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Bytes? I thought they used "Quads" as a measurement of storage...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
About a decade or so ago, I remember someone very crudely trying to ballpark the amount of storage that would be needed to contain the raw data of the entire human brain complete with a lifetime of experience at around 10 terabytes. Needless to say, that seems incredibly unlikely by today's standards.
Even if something like this were possible (storage not withstanding), the data itself would likely be unusable until we sufficiently understood just how our brains work with their own data enough to create a cr
Re: (Score:2)
Meh, if you really want to throw teraflops at it, wait until we have enough processing power to simulate a human embryo growing to a fetus. That'll tell you a whole heck of a lot. From that you can use non-invasive NMRI to get data which you can infer structure from.. and if you actually understand that structure then you won't have to do any simulation, you can transcode it into something more appropriate for a digital computer. Basically, it all comes down to software because if you're just going to re
I wonder... (Score:2)
what their tech persons blood elf or tauren will look like?
It's said... (Score:3, Interesting)
...Apple used to use a Cray to design their new computers, whereas Seymoure Cray used an Apple to design his.
More compute power is nice, but only if the programs are making efficient use of it. MPI is not a particularly efficient method of message passing, and many implementations (such as MPICH) are horribly inefficient implementations. Operating systems aren't exactly well-designed for parallelism on this scale, with many benchtests putting TCP/IP-based communications ahead of shared memory on the same fripping node! TCP stacks are not exactly lightweight, and shared memory implies zero copy, so what's the problem?
Network topologies and network architectures are also far more important than raw CPU power, as that is the critical point in any high-performance computing operation. Dolphinics is quoting 2.5 microsecond latencies, Infiniband is about 8 microseconds, and frankly these are far far too slow for modern CPUs. That's before you take into account that most of the benchmarks are based on ping-pong tests (minimal stack usage, no data) and not real-world usage. I know of no network architecture that provides hardware native reliable multicast, for example, despite the fact that most problem-spaces are single-data, most networks already provide multicast, and software-based reliable multicast has existed for a long time. If you want to slash latencies, you've also got to look at hypercube or butterfly topologies, fat-tree is vulnerable to congestion and cascading failures - it also has the worst-possible number of hops to a destination of almost any network. Fat-tree is also about the only one people use.
There is a reason you're seeing Beowulf-like machines in the Top 500 - it's not because PCs are catching up to vector processors, it's because CPU count isn't the big bottleneck and superior designs will outperform merely larger designs. Even with the superior designs out there, though, I would consider them to be nowhere even remotely close to potential. They're superior only with respect to what's been there before, not with respect to where skillful and clueful engineers could take them. If these alternatives are so much better, then why is nobody using them? Firstly, most supercomputers go to the DoD and other Big Agencies, who have lots of money where their brains used to be. Secondly, nobody ever made headlines off having the world's most effective supercomputer. Thirdly, what vendor is going to supply Big Iron that will take longer to replace and won't generate the profit margins?
(Me? Cynical?)
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"That's before you take into account that most of the benchmarks are based on ping-pong tests (minimal stack usage, no data) and not real-world usage."
Seems fine to me. I put all my new systems through the ping-pong test, sometimes i even win.
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I can easily say that Apple and Cray connection is a valid claim since a very high profile Cray guy confirms it on the Cray FAQ:
http://www.spikynorman.dsl.pipex.com/CrayWWWStuff/Cfaqp3.html#TOC23 [pipex.com]
The FAQ also explains why a Beowulf can't match a supercomputer for certain tasks.
What makes me wonder is, what really happened to "Connection Machine" which is a massive break from Von Neumann architecture. It is like a plane compared to a car. How come they didn't evaluate such an invention?
http://en.wikipedia.org [wikipedia.org]
Re:It's said... (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that we've got SDR IB with under 2 microseconds latency for the shortest hops (and ~3 for the longest), I think you need to go update your anti-cluster argument. :) The problems with congestion in fat trees have virtually nothing to do with latency. Yes massive congestion will kill your latency numbers, but given that you don't get cascades and other failures causing congestion without fairly large bandwidth utilization, latency is the least of your worries that that point. Furthermore, the cascades you talk about also aren't common except in extremely oversubscribed networks or in the presence of malfunctioning hardware. We do our best to use properly functioning hardware and to have no more that 2:1 oversubscription (with our largest machine not being oversubscribed at all).
MPICH ain't that bad (heck, MPICH2, even just it's MPI-1 parts might be considered to be pretty good by some). MPI as standard for message-passing is fine. I'd love to hear what you think is wrong with MPI and see some examples where another portable message passing standard does consistently better. Though it's a bit like C or C++ or Perl in that there are lots of really bad ways to accomplish things in MPI and a handful of good ones. It's low-level enough that you need to know what you're doing. But if you believe anyone that tells you they have a way to make massively parallel programming easy, I've got a bridge you might be interested in.
Finally, I don't know of much in the way of a "supercomputer" that's using TCP for it's MPI traffic these days, so you can put that old saw out to pasture as well.
Parent
Can You Imagine (Score:2, Funny)
Don't worry (Score:3, Funny)
Can't take another 40 (Score:5, Funny)
in 40 years some kid will laugh at your pathetic attempt at geek coolness when you mention the Bluewater and say "wow your old..."
Forty more years of the kids saying "your"? Kill me now! :)
Parent
F@H is already past 2.5 Petaflops (Score:2, Interesting)
Folding @ Home easly trounces this puny supercomputer.
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Ya know there's a tv series now? Season 2 is about to start.
enjoy ;) [mininova.org]
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I wouldn't be surprised if the actual delivery date was 2012 and some Govt. official said "IBM guys, there is a possibility that Terminator freaks and Mayan 2012 freaks combine, change it to 2011"
Look what CERN had to deal with and still dealing with on HADRON super collider :)
Re:Yes, but the article doesn't address a few ques (Score:5, Funny)
It will not run 32 bit linux, so of course, the admins in charge are going to bitch about the lack of adobe flash support.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Nah but it will finally run Vista.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)