The Top 5 Supercomputers More Power Hungry Than Ever

[tgoyer]

Good lord, they need their own LFTR just to power the thing....

 

[Guest]

975mhz what u talking about ?

 

[eddieroolz]

Considering its cheaper than ever to buy huge numbers of processors and hooking it up together, of course power use will grow rapidly. But all that power is going towards a good use.

On the other hand, I'd love to see what this "Chinese architecture" is like...

 

[aldaia]

Other data on the K-computer:

Operating System: Linux (who said Linux didn't achieve world domination)

Memory: 1410048 Gb (yes more than 1 Petabyte)

Interconnect: Tofu Interconnect custom built .
The interconnect is the key in a supercomputer. K achieves the record of 93% linpack efficiency which is extraordinary considering the average supercomputer is around 70% and GPU based supercomputers are around 50%

Also Energy efficiency is excellent, achieving 830 MFlops/watt this is much more energy efficient than a desktop, and puts this computer among the most energy efficient of the world.

For those that wonder what they are used for, this are the research fields for which K is used:
1. Computational life science and application in drug discovery and medical development
2. New materials and energy creation
3. Projection of global change toward the mitigation of natural disasters
4. Industrial innovations
5. The origin of matter and the universe

 

[aldaia]

[citation][nom]aldaia[/nom]
1. Computational life science and application in drug discovery and medical development
2. New materials and energy creation
3. Projection of global change toward the mitigation of natural disasters
4. Industrial innovations
5. The origin of matter and the universe[/citation]
In addition, each field has several subfields. For instance 2. "New materials and energy creation" explores the following subfields:
■ Fundamental science of novel quantum states and new materials
■ Molecular function and matter transformation
■ Energy conversion
■ Next-generation advanced device science
This last one is of particular interest for computer enthusiasts, since it will perform research for future electronic devices, making future computers faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
"As semiconductor devices become smaller, it will become more difficult to design or predict the operation of semiconductor devices using the existing techniques in the very near future. The K supercomputer will enable us to perform simulations for whole practical nanoscale devices, based on electronic theory, and to develop guidelines for designing new devices that incorporate the quantum effects that control nano-level phenomena."

 

[aldaia]

[citation][nom]32103940[/nom]only 18W per core? what am i missing[/citation]
[citation][nom]frostmachine[/nom]Boards, RAMs, etc. So it's actually less than 18W per core[/citation]
Each CPU has 8 SPARC64 VIIIfx cores made by Fujitsu. Yes, the fastest supercomputer in the world doesn't use an Intel, AMD or IBM CPU, it uses a Fujitsu CPU.
Each CPU has a TDP of only 58 W that's 7,25W per core. Despite its low TDP the CPUs are water cooled (probably to cramp a lot of them is a small space).