[Beowulf] El Reg: AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough

[Vincent Diepeveen]

On May 10, 2013, at 6:04 AM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:

>
> On 5/8/13 6:41 PM, "Prentice Bisbal" <prentice.bisbal at rutgers.edu>  
> wrote:
>
>> On 05/08/2013 09:41 AM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:
>>> The game console business is a strange one, and I don't know that  
>>> it has
>>> much to bring to the HPC world (whoa, that will provoke some  
>>> comment).
>>
>> Roadrunner's body isn't even cold yet, and everyone's already  
>> forgotten
>> about it. :(
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Roadrunner
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_microprocessor
>>
>>
>
> I think roadrunner is an example of a one-off stunt..
> In the long run, "easy programming" is probably a bigger cost driver.
>

The top500.org of today completely refutes your statement there.

november 2012 list http://www.top500.org/list/2012/11/

number 1: cray with gemini interconnect and K20x.

That's not *easy* to program. Interconnect nor CUDA.

number 2:

BlueGene/Q

also not 'easy' to program for with those dead slow latencies it has.

number 3:

sparc64 VIIIfx 2.0Ghz with 8 cores

Yet again it's not standard x64 cpu's. It's Fujitsu cpu's.

Also heavily focussing upon vectorization. ILP type vectorization  
simply is *not* easy.

number 6:

possibly the only relative 'easy' to program in the entire top10. As  
it has seemingly Mellanox FDR with Xeon E5 cpu's.

Because of their interconnects, supercomputers by definition are not  
*easy* to program.
In the long run always the struggle is there to get the maximum out  
of the cheapest processing power.

That simply is not 'easy programming'.

This is both true in HPC as well as the embedded world.

>
>>
>
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