The Top 5 Supercomputers More Power Hungry Than Ever
As expected, Japans K Computer has extended its lead in the prestigious Top500 Supercomputer list.
The updated K system now has 705,024 processing cores, delivers 10.5 PFlops and consumes about 12.7 MW. For the first time, the list also includes a supercomputer that integrates a Chinese processor architecture.
The current Top500 list now ranks four Asian systems among the five fastest supercomputers in the world. NUDT YH MPP follows the K Computer with a performance of 2.6 PFlops. A 1.8 PFlops computer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is in third place, followed by a Dawning TC3600 system in China (1.3 PFlops) and a HP ProLiant SL390s supercomputer (1.2 PFlops) at Tokyo's GSIC Center. Despite greater power efficiencies in microprocessors, the overall power consumption is expanding at a rapid pace: K Computer consumes 12.7MW. The five fastest supercomputers are estimated at a consumption of 27.3 MW, up from 14.8 MW just three years ago.
The November 2011 list also includes, for the first time, a computer that uses China's Shenwei SW1600 CPU. Clocked at 975 MHz, the processor has 16 cores and debuts in a system installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan. The system is ranked at position 14.
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Connect them into a cluster and behold: "Skynet"
that's a lot of power. but can it run Crysis?
the benchmark pcs built for fx reviews comsume more power than these supercomputers!
Wake me up when we hit 1.21 gigawatts....
But can it cool a system playing Crysis?
most high end power supplies for enthusiast pcs 1000-1600 watts, or 1-1.6kw, not mw
kilowatt=thousand
megawatt=million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawatt#Megawatt
A Chinese CPU?
If they had a x86 license and made said architecture CPU's, I wonder how they would perform, a.k.a price/performance.
Was I the only one who asked themselves that question?
On topic now..
Damn that's a lot of power, like a power station dedicated just to the top supercomputer. :\ I wonder if indeed they did dedicate one to it.
most high end power supplies for enthusiast pcs 1000-1600 watts, or 1-1.6kw, not mw
You know this isn't talking about enthusiast PCs right?
The average i7 PC is putting out around 60-70 GFlops, which is about a million times less than a PFlop...
(1 PFlop = 1000000 GFlop)
12.7 mega(yes mega)watts actually seems a bit low for 10.5 PFlops, but maybe I'm missing something
Haven't these guys heard of going green? I wonder what green peace is doing about this.... 12MW?????? OMG that's a whole Power Generating Units Output...... And not some small Hydroelectric power plant.... Unbelievable...
Well, this does seem more like an Enthusiast PC, only it's a very enthusiastic corp.
They alone should be held accountable for such a massive waste of electricity and it is a waste if the rigs can't use up their PCIe Bandwidth.....
Yes you are missing the communications devices between the nodes which consumes equal power to the nodes and the cooling system which consumes as much as the nodes and communication together. So the actual calculations only consumes a 1/4 of the total power.
Haven't these guys heard of going green? I wonder what green peace is doing about this.... 12MW?????? OMG that's a whole Power Generating Units Output...... And not some small Hydroelectric power plant.... Unbelievable...Well, this does seem more like an Enthusiast PC, only it's a very enthusiastic corp.They alone should be held accountable for such a massive waste of electricity and it is a waste if the rigs can't use up their PCIe Bandwidth.....
For each 1$ spent on computing for research the gain is about 10 times more saved by the results of the research.
i wonder what they're being used for?
@alyoshka green peace use the supercomputers to formulate their league tables and to calculated and control their battleplans RTS game style to help fight world injustice and crimes against nature.
@Pasoleatis if only that where true. I would love to see the actual figures for that. I've been a long term folder but after a few years I've came to wonder is such projects actually producing valuable results. Not that I expect to wake up and suddenly x, y , z is cured but has folding actually improved understanding in those areas? F1 is a prime example of how moving to modelling systems can't produce the results of actually getting a car out on track and physically running the parts.
only 18W per core? what am i missing
i wonder what they're being used for?
for simulating directors and ceos (people with money) pr0n!
only 18W per core? what am i missing
Boards, RAMs, etc. So it's actually less than 18W per core
Haven't these guys heard of going green?
You do realise that this particular supercomputer was the 6th most energy efficient as of June 2011? It's probably shuffled a few places now as it is using ~30% more power, but efficiency is about performance/watt, not just how much power is consumed.
A Chinese CPU? If they had a x86 license and made said architecture CPU's, I wonder how they would perform, a.k.a price/performance.Was I the only one who asked themselves that question?
I didn't ask. I looked.
The SW1600 looks like it is based on the Alpha 21164
http://laotsao.wordpress.com/2011/ [...] pha-21164/
which begs the question: did the Red Chinese license or pirate the technology?
It be interesting if they were all connected together for Folding@home or World Community Grid
What the results would be and what researchers would find.
It also be interesting if they used all that computer power to make a crazy A.I system for a video game.
12.7 MW is NOT an entire power station's output. Get a clue. That is a small amount. Plenty of large industrial machinery takes more power to run.
I work at a commercial nuclear plant. We have 2 units. Each unit produces just under 1250 MW, for just under 2500 MW total put on the grid. Coal plants range from 500 MW to thousands of MW's also, depending on how many boilers they have.
i wonder what they're being used for?
Probably the same thing America uses their top supercomputers for; testing and monitoring their nuclear weapons.
What the hell do people keep talking about??
Can this play Crysis? Yes. That's what they built it for.
Can it cool a Crysis system?? It's a computer not a cooler dammit.
A SUPERCOMPUTER IS AN ENTHUSIAST PC???????? SERIOUSLY????
no wonder why they didn't shut down fukishima immediately
famous last words of a japanese super computer operator: "wait wait we need to do a proper shut down of our super computer, just hold on, it will only take 3 days..."
can these supercomputers play farmville with 16x aa and high details? can they? ;D
Good lord, they need their own LFTR just to power the thing....
975mhz what u talking about ?
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...
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
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
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."
only 18W per core? what am i missing
Boards, RAMs, etc. So it's actually less than 18W per core
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).