China has two exaflop supercomputers. It's doubtful whether this is the world's most powerful supercomputer. https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/10/26/china-has-already-re...
I'm not really sure why you would trust this claim from China. Its not impossible, but its also not impossible to lie about
AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
161–170 of 172 posts
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a supercomputer. The programming model is very, very different. The software stack is full of incredibly fragile stuff from any number of manufacturers. It's honestly hard to even describe how much more difficult using MPI with Fortran on a supercomputer is compared to anything I've ever touched elsewhere. Maybe factory automation comes close?
How could someone get practical experience in this space?
I know of five ways:
1. As an undergraduate, join a research group that needs to run simulations on a supercomputer.
2. As a grad student, join a research group that works with supercomputers.
3. As a software engineer or IT person, join a research group at a university. They need people too, but fair warning: the pay is...subpar.
4. Join a national laboratory in some capacity. This route necessitates working for your country's government or military, which may or may not be palatable to you depending on how you feel about your gov't/military.
5. Join a giant multinational company that has supercomputers and uses them. Exxon is a good example. They have massive supercomputing power.
Unless you're an undergrad, I'm afraid all the ways I know of suck in some way or another. I did 1 & 3. As for the rest, I think 2 would make the most sense if you have BS, because you can go get a masters in a year or so while getting the experience.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (..) when nuclear labs get >1000 petaflop super computers (..) Would you prefer the research being performed based on empirical testing instead of running simulations?
IMO: we had good enough nuclear weapons 50 years ago to glass the whole planet, so why continue to try and improve a weapon of armageddon? Just maintain and build the same old nuclear weapons that are effective enough and try and remove the need for the weapons over time with the diplomatic and political process.
that's why the mission switched to "stockpile stewardship" some time ago - we have to maintain the reliability of the existing fleet since we don't build many new ones.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#164China has two exaflop supercomputers. It's doubtful whether this is the world's most powerful supercomputer. https://www.nextplatform.com/2021/10/26/china-has-already-re...
all that matters in this context is whether they run TOP500 or not.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
The national labs aren't purely--or likely even mostly--dedicated to nuclear research. Instead, they cover a lot of the basic science research. These supercomputers will likely be used for projects like exploring cosmological models, or studying intramolecular interactions for chemical compounds, or fine-tuning predictions about properties of the top quark, etc.
Oak Ridge in particular is in DoE Office of Science. They do some national security work, but their primary focus is basic science. Some of the national labs do primarily do nuclear weapons related research, but not Oak Ridge. Frontier is only doing unclassified work, primarily basic science and engineering.
Right; the labs most associated with nuclear work are LLNL and LANL. Both have had, IIRC, clusters configured for dual work- they could be partitioned between confidential and public work. The lab I wortked at, LBL, only did non-conf work but I know that LLNL took our codes and used them for nuclear simulations... errr, stockpile stewardship using multiphysics combustion codes.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oak Ridge in particular is in DoE Office of Science. They do some national security work, but their primary focus is basic science. Some of the national labs do primarily do nuclear weapons related research, but not Oak Ridge. Frontier is only doing unclassified work, primarily basic science and engineering.
Right; the labs most associated with nuclear work are LLNL and LANL. Both have had, IIRC, clusters configured for dual work- they could be partitioned between confidential and public work. The lab I wortked at, LBL, only did non-conf work but I know that LLNL took our codes and used them for nuclear simulations... errr, stockpile stewardship using multiphysics combustion codes.
Oak Ridge does not do dual-use on the big leadership facilities, it's not really feasible with how they operate. I think Frontier can technically handle "moderate" data (e.g. export controlled), but not classified. It's meant for open science.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked at Intel in a very closely related area. I quit after getting vaccinated for COVID, only stayed because of the pandemic. The biggest problem was that Intel simply couldn't execute. They couldn't design and manufacture hardware in a timely manner without too many bugs. I think this was due to poor management practices. My direct manager was amazing, but my skiplevel was always dealing with fires. It felt like…
I’ve been reading about Pat Gelsinger turning things around on execution, but many of the announced products for this year are already late (Sapphire Rapids, GPUs, even alder lake roll out was late). Do you know if anything has changed at Intel? Is it reasonable to expect changes within a year and a half of starting on the job given the size of the company and the changes needed?
I'll somewhat echo the other response: I believe in Pat. He clearly communicates during his press releases, obviously is very technical and has a good understanding of the industry. He also seems to work well with others. I think it's possible he can turn that ship around (and may already be doing so), but it was just too late for me.
I haven't sold the $INTC I got as comp, and that probably speaks louder than whatever I say here.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oak Ridge in particular is in DoE Office of Science. They do some national security work, but their primary focus is basic science. Some of the national labs do primarily do nuclear weapons related research, but not Oak Ridge. Frontier is only doing unclassified work, primarily basic science and engineering.
Right; the labs most associated with nuclear work are LLNL and LANL. Both have had, IIRC, clusters configured for dual work- they could be partitioned between confidential and public work. The lab I wortked at, LBL, only did non-conf work but I know that LLNL took our codes and used them for nuclear simulations... errr, stockpile stewardship using multiphysics combustion codes.
Didn't LANL get renamed to LANS?
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right; the labs most associated with nuclear work are LLNL and LANL. Both have had, IIRC, clusters configured for dual work- they could be partitioned between confidential and public work. The lab I wortked at, LBL, only did non-conf work but I know that LLNL took our codes and used them for nuclear simulations... errr, stockpile stewardship using multiphysics combustion codes.
Didn't LANL get renamed to LANS?
No, LANS was the name of the LLC that used to run LANL (which lost the contract a few years ago hence past tense), but the name of the lab itself is [still] LANL. The way the labs are run only a few people in the top leadership roles change if the management company running it changes; grossly oversimplifying they're basically interchangeable and come and go while the technical side of the labs themselves remain stable.
Re: AMD-powered Frontier supercomputer breaks the exascale barrier
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO: we had good enough nuclear weapons 50 years ago to glass the whole planet, so why continue to try and improve a weapon of armageddon? Just maintain and build the same old nuclear weapons that are effective enough and try and remove the need for the weapons over time with the diplomatic and political process.
> IMO: we had good enough nuclear weapons 50 years ago to (...) The money pouring into research disproves this. In fact, it makes no sense at all to clam that our collective understanding of a phenomenon is already satisfactory and all research was already done after a few years of the first real world test. For context, the Oklahoma City bombing was a few decades into the past but it still motivates a great deal of…
> The money pouring into research disproves this.
Yea, because money always goes to the most important and most useful research! /s