(j3.2006) illusive exaflops

[Bill Long]

On 2/22/11 6:59 PM, Van Snyder wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 14:47 -0800, Jerry Wagener wrote:
>> In the 80's for instance, for most of the decade we tracked the
>> fastest computers in megaflops, and it was big news when the first
>> gigaflops computer appeared. As I recall in the late 90's we were
>> anticipating the amazing advent of the first teraflops computer. And
>> now, according to the article, the fastest computer is about 5
>> petaflops. So for the past 3 decades we've roughly, on-average,
>> doubled the top computing speed each year (10**6 to 10**15). That's
>> even faster than Moore's Law. Amazing.
>>
>> But, alas, the article points out that some tough physical limits are
>> raising their ugly heads which look like this era may be coming to an
>> end, and with it DARPA's hopes for an exaflops computer by 2015 may
>> not be realized. Though I'm reminded of the saying that somebody
>> saying something's impossible is usually interrupted by somebody doing
>> it. Anyway, for an old out-of-touch Fortran geezer it was an
>> interesting read.
>
> At JPL last year, there was a talk by an IBM fellow from the University
> of Kansas (whose name I have forgotten).  He had a contract from DARPA
> to address the question of power consumption.  He looked at computing
> from the gate level, asking how many joules are required per operation.
> DARPA wants their exaflop computer to use less than 38 MW.  The result
> of the study is that with current technology or that foreseen for the
> reasonably near future, it can't be done for less than 60 MW.
>

Not surprising that large computer facilities are increasingly being 
located near power plants. Oak Ridge has started hosting other people's 
systems because of this.

Cheers,
Bill


>
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-- 
Bill Long                                           longb at cray.com
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