Deeper thought

The world has a new fastest computer, thanks to video games

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Another important engineering challenge in supercomputing is providing sufficient power and cooling to all the processers. This is becoming increasingly larger challenge because of the mushrooming number of processors involved:
Back in early 1990s, a Cray supercomputer would require a few hundred kilowatts at most. Today's top 10 supercomputers need upwards of 5 Megawatts, and the Petaflop computers are expected to require 20 Megawatts using 2020 technology (it will need more like 60 Megawatts using today's technology). There simply aren't that many datacenters in the whole World that can power 60 Megawatts (There are a handful in the US, and two in Japan that I know of)

Andrew Oliver in reply to Anjin-San

Like the Strategic Air Command, you put the computers 500 metres underground, and, use cold fluids such as liquid nitrogen.

In the future - maybe by 2020???? - with advances in quantum computing and alloy technology it might even be necessary to use liquid helium four coolants. I have read Issac Asimov's science fiction books predicting the future of computing ...


wonder what it would take to put HANA on it? the more CPU's the more data can be processed quicker, but i'm not sure about GPU's.

Terence Hale

Supercomputing. Deeper thought. I notices and experienced the nonsense of University computer services competing with each other to hook the most users. Running a bioinformatics unit in Zurich I noticed how many Supercomputing parallel processing facilities were offered. Also being offered in a form that is any chord of a circle through two vertices is to the side joining these vertices, that is not parallel processing. For parallel processing you need not only the multiprocessor hardware but a dataflow frameworks, a message passing software system and parallelizing compilers which optimize the “Do” loops and such. Without such many users, as I noticed were just using a single processor on a parallel processing system and selling it as Supercomputing.

Andrew Oliver in reply to Terence Hale

Obviously you do not any conception of how to use the technology of massive parallelisation to achieve things.

An high speed associative memory card implemented by simulating this algorithm in software is much much slower than implementing such an algorithm in hardware ...

It is possible, for example, to send down many parallel paths a 32 bit number into a device about the size of a refridgerator and in constant time receive a 64 bit number the forward and reverse mapping values though the hardware emulated associative mapping which gets the identical result to the software emulation which depending on how it is implemented will ipso facto be much slower.

Earlier in the debate on computer technology advances in 1945 I have claimed that my opinion is that the Germans were ten years ahead in computing in 1945. This is because despite being behind in hardware development, the Z4 design had binary floating point numbers etc etc ... In 1984 researching the history of computing in the Ballieu Library at the University of Melbourne I read a volume of academic papers on the Z4 ... and the cant argument about the branch instructions ignore the presence in some calculations of conditional skip instructions ... I do not remember all the details but I would like to ask why exactly it was that the Germans had jet fighters flying in 1945 whilst the British, the Russians, and the Americans were all still using propellor driven aircraft because the Germans were using floating point arithmetic to design the jet aircraft and the others were ten years behind!

And go read some assembly language instruction manuals such as the DEC Alpha Architecture Manual and learn the difference between conditional branches and conditional skips ... Transcription Reference Not Given.

at_PL in reply to Andrew Oliver

I think that you missed the point. I might be wrong, but I think that Terence was referring to not sufficient tools being available when working on supercomputers. I am not familiar with super-computing at all but parallel processing is very actual problem in regular computing - when computers have many processors with many cores inside you really want to be able to split task into all the cores you have but with currently available tools is not a trivial task. I believe that in the super-computing world the problem is similar but probably even more hard since there are thousands of cores and the whole idea to use the super computer in the first place, is to use ale that crunch power.

Andrew Oliver in reply to at_PL

We were not talking about processor level logic at all. We were talking about high speed hardware dual associative memory logic cells which have 128,000,000,000 semiconductor cells i.e. 128,000,000,000 processors with a 32 bit data / address bus and a 32 bit address / data bus in a two cycle memory fetch that maps the input 32 bit value both ways through the cell maze and therefore maps the 32 bit value in a tree of 32 bit values where the 128,000,000,000 data bits in the memory store define a function from 32 bit values to 32 bit values. Thinking about it a bit more there would be the forward result and maybe a sequence of backwood results with collisions detection and backoffs through a jagged wave form moving through the supercooled high speed memory array - with liquid nitrogen or liquid helium four to keep the glass wires superconducting - about I imagine the size of a refidgerator ... I do not know if this is anything like the "high speed associative memory card" I heard about some years ago but watch star trek and other science fiction often the technology is described fully years before it is actually built when the precision engineering make the super miniturised semiconductor cells small enough! In respect of James Blish Star Trek 1 to 12:- Transcription Reference Not Given.

at_PL in reply to Andrew Oliver

You are probably right, that memory management in such complex system is non-trivial and perhaps a limiting factor. I won't argue, since I don't feel competent enough. But all I said is that Terence was, in my opinion, referring to the problem with using all that crunch power due to the lack of tools making parallel computing easy. I might not understand you correctly, but do you mean that there is hardware solution to the parallel computing? If so, why it is not implemented in regular CPU's? I am really interested in that.

Andrew Oliver in reply to at_PL

I'm afraid that I live in Melbourne and have never seen direct in person any supercomputer complexes ... though one day in January 1978 we did go on a tour through the Monash University server room which had some quite expensive mainframes ... and we remember the notice on the wall warning people of the carbon dioxide 10 second flood and the importance of getting out quick if a fire started!

I base much of my beliefs about computers on Star Trek The Original Series Issac Asimov books James Blish books Arthur C Clarke books Roger Zelazny books ...

But to answer your question the hardware solution to parallel processing involves a different life force effect to the life force effect of the duplication of information, to wit the resolution of collisons in the searching and sorting of information ... and thermodynamic theory requires a lot of waste heat to be radiated away. Liquid nitrogen coolant systems have to operate at room pressure at -195.82 degrees Celcius and liquid helium four coolant systems have to operate at -268.944 degrees Celcius really expensive to run except deep underground with large multi-level coolant exchange systems! Transcription reference not given.

By the way according to the science fiction the large memory model sorting algorithm for multi-pass merging is a factor of two or more faster than the popular method typically used provided one starts with a fixed number of 64 bit or 32 bit integers to sort and breaks the sorting up carefully in a pre-sort pass into varying sized chunks in order to prevent the loss of wasted bit fractions of distinguishment when merging sub-sequences ... but it is only in recent years that large enough static random access memory chips have become available to take advantage of this possibility!!!!

Go read H. G. Wells "The First Men In The Moon", 1901, and H. G. Wells predictions' of the possibilites of computing though this book discusses the Selinites' and their advanced computer technology not ours!

at_PL in reply to Andrew Oliver

So basically there is no hardware solution to parallel processing right know. As far as I know, when you wan't to use multiple processors or cores you need to break problem into many subroutines and execute them in parallel . In practice, nowadays the map-reduce model pioneered by google is very popular. Not all problems can be solved with such attitude (i.e. breaking problems into subroutines) but probably most of those that require heavy computing - can. But, as Terance said, programming for parallel execution is hard. Much harder than traditional sequenced programming.

Andrew Oliver in reply to at_PL

You have raised doubts about whether or not this technology the "high speed associative memory card" exists now in 2012.

This does not mean it did not exist in a 64,000 size some years ago ... I refer to Intel's research in the early 1980's as to the trade-off's between different types of computability as reported in:-

"8086/8088 16 Bit Microprocessor Primer"
Chrisopher L. Morgan and Mitchell Waite
Peterborough, New Hampshire 1982

When I read your above message I immediately remembered the 8089 the I/O prcoessor technology that Intel developed to enable mutliproccessor 8088/8087/8089 systems to be used in minicomputers with eight 8089 terminal controllors attached to 8 orange or green text only visual display units. I believe that neither I.B.M. Big Blue not Microsoft Corporation agreed to this future direction, in part because the I.B.M. sales teams wanted to defend the technologically superior I.B.M. mainframe profits from the so-called "BUNCH" Burroughs, Univac, National Semiconductor, Control Data Corporation and Honeywell.

Looking in the index I'd suggest you wonder about this reply ... but then what about the evidence the 8082, 8086, 8088, 8087, 8088, 8089, 8237, 8251, 8255, 8256, 8259, 8272, 8275, 8284, 8286, 8288, and 8289 prcoessor designs then sold by Intel - in 1982! - not to mention the outdated 8080 and 8085 they were continuing to sell for the 8-bit computing market.

Transcription Reference Not Given.

It seems possible to my mind that, at least in respect of the 64,000 problem of 16 bit high speed associative memory cards that the Advanced Research Projects Agency had them built and produced in secret ... particularly as when I was employed at the Department of Veteran's Affairs in Melbourne from 1988 to the end of 1997 I used to socialise with other DVA staff in the pub on Friday evenings getting drunk and I confess that between 1988 and 1997 I "overheard" the phrase "high speed associative memory card" somewhere and that for this reason believe that somewhere in the USA there existed - or still exists - a prototype "high speed associative memory card"!

In defence of my fellow staff at DVA between 1988 and 1997 may I say that I never overheard this phrase in the office. And that some of the other public servants who got drunk with us in the Duke of Kent and Celtic Club and other central Melbourne pubs on Friday evenings may not have been employed by DVA. I do not wish any staff at DVA annoyed by the federal police about this matter ... and may I say that junior DVA staff with no secutity clearance were not in that period required to sign Official Secrets Act declarations ... it's just that I got really annoyed recently when reading the newspapers that Senator Conroy has parked his campaign to encircle the National Broadband Network with the "Great Australian Firewall" ... on the basis that he had been briefef by the scientific authorities in the United States to the effect that his proposal was technically infeasible!!!!


I wouldn't call a bunch of average processors supercomputer.
Unless they can build 100GHz CPUs, I wouldn't bother such thing at all.


"a new fastest computer"

The "word" is quite misleading!
It isn't accurate!
"A new highest number crunching computer" may be more accurate.


You know those so-called super computers are not any faster, for your programs, than your desktop computers. Those clusters of many average processors are useful only for very rare applications, such as war games, weather simulations, etc. As I had experience with some super computers in the past, they run your programs actually slower! Current fastest computers are actually IBM mainframes at clocking somewhere 5.5GHz.

davborre in reply to sikko6

Well, yes and no. Processing speed will become important in a procedure type program that sequentially goes through its calculations. However, this is not the case anymore and for good reason. It would be a huge waste of time to carry out calculations using this method. The beauty of modern programs and true computational gains are in the ability to break down a problem into tiny little problems that can be carried out simultaneously and then combined for a final solution. This is the basis of parallel computing.

GPU computing can be thought as an extension of this; but rather than just using hundreds of processors we can now use thousands! (well ideally, first we have to figure out a way to break down the problem into this many little pieces).


Chip speed, cluster size, networking, memory speeed and aggregation on a monster scale only creates a monster tool useful to goverment agencies and academic researchers. The real (almost common) supercomputing work getting done is by corporate users of every stripe. Financial services firms, actuarial firms, manufacturers, biotech companies, oil & gas companies as well as wind energy companies are using customized supercomputers (High Performance Computing) through firms like R Systems NA, Inc to run their software applications.


A new supercomputer that's amazing! Linux way to go. You now run 457 super computers out of 500. The bad part is Titan can be used only by government agencies academic researchers. Common people like me have no use for something like Titan.

Vive_chimie in reply to Arjunreddy13

"Common people" like you probably have no use for an F1 racing car, but in time, many of the design improvements that are tested in racing cars find their way into ordinary cars.
Maybe the same type of evolution can happen in computing?



I thought AMD had best & leanest GPUs

Maybe its Nvidia CUDA? Tho they do say open source - in gpcpu that is opencl

A chinese SC that held the title for a while was zillions of 2 gereration old gpuS

just too dear to buy that many new ones

so maybe not such a feather in nvideas cap?

shall have to google it


GPU's are interesting, but they suffer from a few bottlenecks. Memory is limited to a few GB of high-speed RAM per GPU, and the bus interface is slow compared to the throughput, so applications which require a lot of cross-communication between CPU's cannot ship data fast enough. Even a simple memory copy in or out of the GPU is bound by the slower DRAM in the host system. A sparse matrix iteration would spend most of its time waiting for operands to travel around the system between iterations.

Maybe this installation has a better framework (I envision something like a graphics card with multiple direct Ethernet interfaces to other cards), but off-the-shelf graphics cards are built to be loaded once with a static set of textures and only occasionally read from or written to by the host CPU.

moh maya

Ah, so presumably, this would be better than Earth in finding the question..

Nice Hitchhikers's Guide reference!


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