First true exascale supercomputer? • Hacker News Board

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#41

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

sriram_malhar wrote: post #15

21 MW power! Insane. Interestingly, the second one is 30 MW.

This is the first I have noticed them reporting power draw. It seems immoral to run it for anything that doesn't help stop global climate catastrophe. (Presumably global thermonuclear war would suffice. But carbon capture afterward would be hard to arrange for.)

Wondering if they measure while benchmarking, or add up max power ratings of the chips.

Did any old mainframe ever burn like that? E.g. the first big USAF missile tracking system, the one that filled four floors of a custom building?

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#42

Post by kjs3 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

causi wrote: post #2

It feels like it's been a long time since supercomputers were interesting. They're just oodles of identical processors connected together like legos. "We can afford more bricks than the next guy" is not exciting. When was the last time we had a "fastest supercomputer" that could do something the second-fastest couldn't also do?

You can still get the NEC SX series, which is a non-x86, non-arm vector super. They're pretty nifty. "Fastest" has gone in a different direction tho.

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#43

Post by jeffbee » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #41

sriram_malhar wrote: post #15

21 MW power! Insane. Interestingly, the second one is 30 MW.

This is the first I have noticed them reporting power draw. It seems immoral to run it for anything that doesn't help stop global climate catastrophe. (Presumably global thermonuclear war would suffice. But carbon capture afterward would be hard to arrange for.) Wondering if they measure while benchmarking, or add up max power ratings of the chips. Did any old mainframe ever burn like that? E.g. the first big USAF mi…

Are you kidding? You know a single widebody airliner uses more energy than that, right?

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#44

Post by JonChesterfield » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #7

I used to be really excited about supercomputers. It's part of why I pursued HPC-related work. But I think that having no interest in their actual applications has curbed my enthusiasm. I wish I could make a good living in something that interested more.

Could work on the supercomputer hardware/toolchain/libraries instead of the applications

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#45

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #38

dekhn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me 50 megawatts is the baseline of what I would expect for a decent cluster.

Perhaps you in fact forgot how to count lower than 50.

He is so fast that just counting to ten, he gets that far before he can stop.

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#46

Post by kvetching » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

If they truly wanted to solve world problems, they need to allow an AGI company like DeepMind or OpenAI to use it. The people now using it are likely wasting so much money using outdated technologies.

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#47

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #11

> "This HPE Cray EX system is the first US system with a peak performance exceeding one ExaFlop/s." So, it's not actually the first one? And another one already exists outside the US?

We may assume NSA has faster ones, devoted to speech transcription and codebreaking.

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#48

Post by JonChesterfield » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #10

> 8,730,112 total cores This must include the GPUs, otherwise it'd be 136,408 sockets. For a 42U rack with 4P 1U servers (not that that's what's in use, but to give an understandable napkin figure), that'd be 812 racks. Frontier's own page says 74 "cabinets"/racks, and this is just for the compute (and perhaps switching and/or power? storage is elsewhere). Made up of 9408 nodes, with 4 MI250X gpu accelerators each- t…

Bit hard to guess what a 'core' would be on a gpu. Compute unit / streaming multiprocessor perhaps.

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#49

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #43

ncmncm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first I have noticed them reporting power draw. It seems immoral to run it for anything that doesn't help stop global climate catastrophe. (Presumably global thermonuclear war would suffice. But carbon capture afterward would be hard to arrange for.) Wondering if they measure while benchmarking, or add up max power ratings of the chips. Did any old mainframe ever burn like that? E.g. the first big USAF mi…

Are you kidding? You know a single widebody airliner uses more energy than that, right?

Widebody airliners aren't doing much for the climate, either.

Re: First true exascale supercomputer?

#50

Post by marcodiego » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 7:38 PM UTC

I remember in early 2000's trying to convince people to use linux and being mocked that it was a "toy" or "not professional enough". While at the time I tried to argue how it was more stable, more secure and better performant than competition and even arguing that it was improving continuously, some people still made fun of me. It is a good thing I've been able, for a long time, to see this: https://www.top500.org/statistics/list/ , chose Category:"Operating system family" and click "Submit".