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Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

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Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#201

Post by harpratap »

pankajdoharey wrote: post #158
Animats wrote: post #130

The end of the US semiconductor industry is now in sight. The only US owned state of the art fabs in the US belong to Intel. Intel survives because they have a high margin on x86 CPUs. Today, TMSC announced 5nm, and the top supercomputer is ARM-based. Apple seems to be going ARM. Chromebooks are ARM. Microsoft now offers Windows on ARM, on the Surface Pro X. Mobile never used x86. x86 is on the way out. What's left f…

You see Intel is a 50 yr old company, you think they will sit hand in hand on their bums? If the majority Industry shifts towards ARM ISA Intel will evolve, What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip? I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU. Intel is just trying to drag x86 as far as p…

> I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU

Are you forgetting Amazon's Graviton? And Nuvia seems to be in a good position to dethrone Apple in best ARM CPU race too.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#202

Post by jabl »

m_mueller wrote: post #191
gnufx wrote: post #165

Perhaps it's worth pointing out some context. Given the remarkable predecessor, K Computer, this was only a matter of time. (I heard a great early talk on K, and I wish I knew the speaker for credit who was obviously working quite hard in English, but flawless, ending with basically we did it all ourselves largely de nuovo.) It seems that given the current circumstances, they haven't kept to schedule -- it was suppos…

Maybe you mean Matsuoka sensei? He's the director of RIKEN AICS since a couple of years and a known media figure in Japan.

Satoshi Matsuoka is an "international rock star" in HPC circles. But I don't think he was involved with the K computer; before RIKEN he was IIRC at Tokyo Tech doing their "Tsubame" GPU clusters.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#203

Post by jabl »

gnufx wrote: post #165

Perhaps it's worth pointing out some context. Given the remarkable predecessor, K Computer, this was only a matter of time. (I heard a great early talk on K, and I wish I knew the speaker for credit who was obviously working quite hard in English, but flawless, ending with basically we did it all ourselves largely de nuovo.) It seems that given the current circumstances, they haven't kept to schedule -- it was suppos…

> However, the amount of memory/core is surprising

I think it's a limitation of the technology. HBM2 provides amazing bandwidth, but capacity is quite limited. And it's not like DIMM slots where you can just insert more of them, the memory chips are bonded to the substrate chiplet-style.

This is very similar to high-end GPU's which also use HBM2 memory, e.g. NVIDIA A100 has 40 GB.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#204

Post by jabl »

gnufx wrote: post #171
floatboth wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SVE is whatever width the chip designer wants, Fujitsu's implementation is 512-bit according to AnandTech

I know, but it's different apart from coming in different hardware widths, as ARM techies will gush.

Yes, SVE, like the RISC-V vector extension, is a "real" vector ISA, with things like vector length register (no need for a scalar loop epilog), scatter/gather memory ops for sparse matrix work, mask registers for if-conversion, looser alignment requirements (no/less need for loop prologues).

That being said, apart from becoming wider, AVX-NNN has also gotten more "real" vector features with every generation. The difference might not be as huge anymore.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#205

Post by jabl »

moonchild wrote: post #175
giantrobot wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a vacuum the only way to dissipate heat is radiation and to a lesser extent conduction. In an atmosphere you also have convection. It's more efficient to cool something on Earth than on the Moon. We also have more power options on Earth. On the Moon you'd only really have solar power available and then only two weeks a month. On Earth you've got insolation for half a day every day and the option of other renewable…

> heat dissipation Eh, the moon is made of pretty cold rock. > two weeks a month > half a day every day Amortized, that's the same thing.

Yes, but you need 14 times the battery capacity on the moon unless you plan to shut down your machine half the time.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#206

Post by jabl »

praveen9920 wrote: post #51

Pushing the boundaries is the best way to advance technology Car manufacturers need ridiculously expensive race cars to push the technology to get advancements in everyday car technology. Similarly, Top500 is one way to push the technology for not just computationally but also things like better power, heat and network management in processors and computers in general. With ever doubling server farms, Heat management…

> Heat management of these systems will become the major contributor for environmental pollution than all vehicle exhaust.

No, extra heat just radiates away into space, nothing to worry about. The problem is in the GHG emissions to generate the energy to run (and yes, cool) these systems.

> it makes sense to optimize energy consumed per processor.

Yes, absolutely. Even if you don't care about the environment, power consumption limits chip performance. Doing more work with less power is key to producing faster chips.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#207

Post by m_mueller »

jabl wrote: post #202
m_mueller wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you mean Matsuoka sensei? He's the director of RIKEN AICS since a couple of years and a known media figure in Japan.

Satoshi Matsuoka is an "international rock star" in HPC circles. But I don't think he was involved with the K computer; before RIKEN he was IIRC at Tokyo Tech doing their "Tsubame" GPU clusters.

Yes, but I've seen a talk of him where he also mentions K, so maybe that's what GP meant.

Edit: Btw. I did my PhD at Tokyo Tech (not with Matsuoka though) ;-)

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#208

Post by pankajdoharey »

harpratap wrote: post #201
pankajdoharey wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see Intel is a 50 yr old company, you think they will sit hand in hand on their bums? If the majority Industry shifts towards ARM ISA Intel will evolve, What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip? I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU. Intel is just trying to drag x86 as far as p…

> I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU Are you forgetting Amazon's Graviton? And Nuvia seems to be in a good position to dethrone Apple in best ARM CPU race too.

Yes I really forgot them. But my point really was that Intel won't sit idle.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#209

Post by pankajdoharey »

Animats wrote: post #164
pankajdoharey wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see Intel is a 50 yr old company, you think they will sit hand in hand on their bums? If the majority Industry shifts towards ARM ISA Intel will evolve, What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip? I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU. Intel is just trying to drag x86 as far as p…

What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip? That others can compete directly on price. Intel can probably do it technically, but will not have the margins they had with x86.

Yes that is true. if the Industry shifts happens then the only way they can have those margins is if they build a equally competent ARM Chip, hard to justify to the investors to abandon billions invested in the current architecture. Surely the top management and marketing would be fired. But Intel could do it.

Re: Japan Captures TOP500 Crown with Arm-Powered Supercomputer

#210

Post by pankajdoharey »

sitharus wrote: post #163
pankajdoharey wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see Intel is a 50 yr old company, you think they will sit hand in hand on their bums? If the majority Industry shifts towards ARM ISA Intel will evolve, What stops Intel from Licensing the ARM Core and build a industry leading ARM Chip? I think no-one with the exception of Apple in the semiconductor industry has more resources than Intel to build a world class ARM CPU. Intel is just trying to drag x86 as far as p…

Intel already license the ARM core IP and used to build their own ARM chips under the XScale brand. They sold the line off in 2007 IIRC but retained the ARM architectural license. The only thing that stops them is their will to do it.

Ohh yes Scale, they could revive it.
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