[Beowulf] 3.79 TFlops sp, 0.95 TFlops dp, 264 TByte/s, 3 GByte, 198 W @ 500 EUR

[Vincent Diepeveen]

On Dec 22, 2011, at 4:42 PM, Prentice Bisbal wrote:

> On 12/22/2011 09:57 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 09:43:55AM -0500, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
>>
>>> Or if your German is rusty:
>>>
>>> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/amd-radeon-hd-7970-graphics- 
>>> card-launched-benchmarked-fastest-single-gpu-board-available/7204
>> Wonder what kind of response will be forthcoming from nVidia,
>> given developments like http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/14/ 
>> arm_gpu_nvidia_supercomputer/
>>
>> It does seem that x86 is dead, despite good Bulldozer performance
>> in Interlagos
>>
>> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/AMDs-Serverprozessoren-mit- 
>> Bulldozer-Architektur-legen-los-1378230.html
>>
>> (engage dekrautizer of your choice).
>>
>
> At SC11, it was clear that everyone was looking for ways around the
> power wall.

The obvious answer to that is clustering machines of course!

> I saw 5 or 6 different booths touting the use of FPGAs for
> improved performance/efficiency. I don't remember there being a single
> FPGA booth in the past. Whether the accelerator is GPU, FPGA, GRAPE,
> Intem MIC, or something else,  I think it's clear that the future  
> of HPC
> architecture is going to change radically in the next couple years,
> unless some major breakthrough occurs for commodity processors.
>
> I think DE Shaw Research's Anton computer, which uses FPGAs and custom
> processors, is an excellent example of what the future of HPC might  
> look
> like.

Not unless when they sell dozens of millions of them.

To quote Linus: "The tiny processors have won".

Because they get massively produced which keeps price cheap.
It's about clustering them and then produce software that gets the  
maximum performance out of it.

The software is always a lot behind the hardware!

>
> --
> Prentice
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