Worlds fastest supercomputer!

[Yzzim]

A new cold war?

USA vs Japan

 

[Random Variable]

To clarify things even further:



<< Tokyo, Friday 8th March 2002 -- NEC Corporation (NEC) today announced the completion of its delivery of the ultra high-speed vector parallel computing system known as "the Earth Simulator," to the Earth Simulation Center (ESC, Tetsuya Sato, Director). The system is slated to begin operation on March 11, 2002.

The Earth Simulator was developed by the Earth Simulator Research and Development Center (ESRDC, Kiyoshi Asai, Director), which is a collaborative organization of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA, Shuichiro Yamanouchi, President), Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI, Kenichi Murakami, President), and Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC, Takuya Hirano, President).

The Earth Simulator system was installed in the simulator building (with floor space 50m x 65m) at Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences (Yokohama, Kanagawa) of JAMSTEC. This is the world's fastest supercomputer configured with 640 nodes (64GFLOPS/node, 5,120 CPUs in total), each of which consists of eight vector processors (8GFLOPS/CPU), and achieves the peak performance of 40TFLOPS (40 trillion floating-point operations per second).

The Earth Simulator will create a "virtual planet earth" on the computer by its capability of processing vast volume of data sent from satellites, buoys and other worldwide observation point. The system will contribute to analyze and predict environmental changes on the earth through the simulation of various global scale environmental phenomena such as global warming, El Nino effect, atmospheric and marine pollution, torrential rainfall and other complicated environmental effects. It will also provide an outstanding research tool in explaining terrestrial phenomena such as tectonics and earthquakes.

NEC has been committed to the project with full-scale efforts since it was initially selected to develop the basic design in 1997. Since then, NEC has engaged in a series of developments such as the technology research and development in 1998, detailed design in 1999, the manufacture and implementation of the system in 2000, leading up to the completion of the main system and start of operation this year.

NEC is highly honored to be a part of the Earth Simulator project which Japan can proudly present to the world. By developing leading-edge technologies further, NEC intends to work on the tuning in the system's operability and the sustained performance with the maximum efforts for years to come.

Main features of the Earth Simulator?s system

State-of-the-art semiconductor technology Realizes the ultra high speed by employing the 0.15 micron (µm) copper wiring process, with approximately 57 million transistors, and leading-edge ultra-high-speed and high density CMOS technology.

Ultra large-scale parallel computation system Built with 640 nodes (5,120 CPUs in total), each of which consists of eight vector processors (8GFLOPS/CPU, 64GFLOPS/node), achieves the peak performance of 40TFLOPS (40 trillion floating-point operations per second). 16GB main memory capacity for the shared memory of a computing node, and 10TB for the whole system.

Enhanced UNIX-based basic software and development environment "SUPER-UX," a UNIX-based basic software developed exclusively for the NEC?s supercomputer "SX-Series," is provided with large enhancement and expansion. As program development environment, language compilers which perform automatic parallelization and automatic vectorization, such as Fortran90, HPF, C, and C++ are also provided, as well as message passing library MPI2 and mathematical library ASL/ES. >>

 

[Random Variable]

n/m

 

[Random Variable]

The supercomputer would seem to be a very large NEC SX-6, but I could be wrong.

EDIT: Because a 128-node SX-6 delivers 8 Teraflops of peak performance.

 

[Bluga]

gotta have one!

 

[mss242]

<<

<< The new leader in Linpack teraflops contained 5104 NEC Vector microprocessors and covers an area equal to about three tennis courts. The chips are assembled into 640 systems using 8 chips apiece, with 2900 km of cable to connect all of the machines together. >>



I was under the impression that the computer had 640 nodes, each having 5104 CPU's. But the number of CPU's you would then have sounds just a bit unreal, so I think you are correct. It propably has 5104 CPU's altogether. >>



But 5104 is not divisible by 640. 5104 is clearly the model number on the chip.

 

[Bluga]

<< But Hamid Arabnia, editor in chief of the Journal of Supercomputing, says the Earth Simulator could be built to perform certain tasks very well but not others.

"These guys should very much be encouraged. It's a very big achievement, but I don't think it is a breakthrough," Arabnia told New Scientist.

"One should not say that, because these guys are doing well in this particular benchmark, therefore their system is far better," he says. "At this technology level it is really like comparing apples with oranges."
. >>



is this guy jealous or what?

 

[Random Variable]

<<

<<

<< The new leader in Linpack teraflops contained 5104 NEC Vector microprocessors and covers an area equal to about three tennis courts. The chips are assembled into 640 systems using 8 chips apiece, with 2900 km of cable to connect all of the machines together. >>



I was under the impression that the computer had 640 nodes, each having 5104 CPU's. But the number of CPU's you would then have sounds just a bit unreal, so I think you are correct. It propably has 5104 CPU's altogether. >>



But 5104 is not divisible by 640. 5104 is clearly the model number on the chip. >>




<< The Earth Simulator system was installed in the simulator building (with floor space 50m x 65m) at Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences (Yokohama, Kanagawa) of JAMSTEC. This is the world's fastest supercomputer configured with 640 nodes (64GFLOPS/node, 5,120 CPUs in total), each of which consists of eight vector processors (8GFLOPS/CPU), and achieves the peak performance of 40TFLOPS (40 trillion floating-point operations per second). >>


It's 5120, not 5104.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Ambitious project. I wonder how much they will actually accomplish with it though in terms of modeling accuracy. Sounds like a lot of processing power, but I would think what they state as a goal would require something several orders of magnitude greater. Still, it is a good start, and in 50 years or so, who can say what can be done?

 

[Random Variable]

It is a very large NEC SX-6 because each node of the SX-6 consists of 8 CPUs with a theoretical peak performance of 64 GigaFLOPS per second. And the "Earth Simulator" has 640 nodes, which would be a total of 5,120 CPUs. And 640 nodes*64 GigaFLOPS per second=40,096=40 TeraFLOPS per second, which is the theoretical peak performance of the "Earth Simulator."

So it is not a new supercomputer per se.

EDIT: Therefore, each processor of the "Earth Simulator" has a theorectical peak performance of 8 GigaFLOPS per second. Does anyone know the floating-point performance of the Pentium 4 Northwood or the Athlon XP off the top of their head?

DOUBLE EDIT: I'm just repeating what was said in the press release.

 

[Piano Man]

<< The accomplishment is also a dramatic statement of contrasting scientific and technology priorities in the United States and Japan. The Japanese machine was built to analyze climate change, including global warming, as well as weather and earthquake patterns. The United States has predominantly focused its efforts on building powerful computers for simulating weapons. >>



That's what I'm talkin about!!! Good for Japan.

 

[cthulhu]

Pics?

 

[Random Variable]

<<

<< The accomplishment is also a dramatic statement of contrasting scientific and technology priorities in the United States and Japan. The Japanese machine was built to analyze climate change, including global warming, as well as weather and earthquake patterns. The United States has predominantly focused its efforts on building powerful computers for simulating weapons. >>



That's what I'm talkin about!!! Good for Japan. >>


That is such baloney.

 

[Nefrodite]

does it have a type R sticker too

pretty impressive anyhow

 

[Random Variable]

<< Pics? >>


This is what one cabinet looks like:

http://cray.com/images/systems/sx6.jpg

 

[Nemesis77]

<< Does anyone know the floating-point performance of the Pentium 4 Northwood or the Athlon XP off the top of their head? >>



To my knowledge, 2GHz P4 gets about 1.4 Gigaflops. Athlon does somewhat better.

 

[Linux23]

and they couldn't do all of this on a DUAL AMD(R) Rig?

 

[Piano Man]

<< That is such baloney. >>



Yes, you are right. This should have happened a long time ago.

 

[tk149]

<< The new leader in Linpack teraflops contained 5104 NEC Vector microprocessors and covers an area equal to about three tennis courts. The chips are assembled into 640 systems using 8 chips apiece, with 2900 km of cable to connect all of the machines together. >>



Just think of the amount of cooling this thing needs. It could CAUSE global warming all by itself! Especially when some AT'er decides to O/C it!

 

[ProviaFan]

Here are some pics for you. Unfortunately, the page is in Japanese, but it does give plenty of pictures.

 

[Night201]

Here is a thought:

Think back to the Eniac like 55 years ago. It was huge and very slow compared to today's standards. Now think how small computers are now and how much faster they are then the Eniac which at the time was very fast. How many years away do you think we are until we have this kind of power in desktop size systems?

 

[Random Variable]

<< Here are some pics for you. Unfortunately, the page is in Japanese, but it does give plenty of pictures. >>


It's not big enough!

 

[CedarTeeth135]

I wonder what kind of a 3dMark it has.

 

[ProviaFan]

<< Here is a thought:

Think back to the Eniac like 55 years ago. It was huge and very slow compared to today's standards. Now think how small computers are now and how much faster they are then the Eniac which at the time was very fast. How many years away do you think we are until we have this kind of power in desktop size systems? >>


It's hard to imagine THz CPUs and TBs of RAM in desktop systems, but someday it might be possible.

 

[johneetrash]

<< Here is a thought:

Think back to the Eniac like 55 years ago. It was huge and very slow compared to today's standards. Now think how small computers are now and how much faster they are then the Eniac which at the time was very fast. How many years away do you think we are until we have this kind of power in desktop size systems? >>



55 years?