JF_Aidan_Pryde
Regular
Where's a good place to learn about supercomputers? Since Cray and its famous line "you can't fake bandwidth" (regarding why Cray 1 had no cache), what's been happening?
Cray seems to be no longer number one. The Earth Simulator has managed to get that trophy. IBM's ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L is meant to take that back though, at 100 and 360 Teraflops each.
What I'd like to learn more about is how do these computers organisationally differ from PCs, workstatations and commerical servers. How do Intel based supercomputers fair against ones which employ custom chips? ie. Power4, Alpha.
What about the software? On PCs, SMP doesn't really scale linearly for most apps. But the scientic workloads of supercomps I guess are different. What kind of algorithms and methodology do them employ to get supercomputers to optimally work on data in SMP?
Finally, the whole 'on demand'/pervasive/autonomous/utility/grid computing model. How will this affect supercomputers? How realistic is the vision of an 'internet' that not only serves data but acts as a transparent grid of massive computing power?
Looking forward to hear from some 'key' people.
Thanks!
Cray seems to be no longer number one. The Earth Simulator has managed to get that trophy. IBM's ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L is meant to take that back though, at 100 and 360 Teraflops each.
What I'd like to learn more about is how do these computers organisationally differ from PCs, workstatations and commerical servers. How do Intel based supercomputers fair against ones which employ custom chips? ie. Power4, Alpha.
What about the software? On PCs, SMP doesn't really scale linearly for most apps. But the scientic workloads of supercomps I guess are different. What kind of algorithms and methodology do them employ to get supercomputers to optimally work on data in SMP?
Finally, the whole 'on demand'/pervasive/autonomous/utility/grid computing model. How will this affect supercomputers? How realistic is the vision of an 'internet' that not only serves data but acts as a transparent grid of massive computing power?
Looking forward to hear from some 'key' people.
Thanks!