The New Top 500 Supercomputers: China's Computing Power is on a Serious Uptick, GPU Deployment Grows

By Clay Dillow Posted 11.14.2011 at 1:55 pm 5 Comments

Jaguar: Now Number Three, Soon to Be Number One Again ORNL

The newest TOP500 List--the ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers--dropped today, and two things are clear: graphics processing units are increasingly augmenting the power of the world’s most sophisticated supercomputers, and China is adding computing strength at an ambitious rate. Ten years ago China had just three computers that made the TOP500. It now has 73 on the list, including the second-fastest computer in the world in its Tianhe-1A supercomputer.

Retaining its place at the front of the pack is Japan’s K Computer, which lives at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Sciences. Tinahe-1A is second, while America’s fastest supercomputer (and former number one), Oak Ridge National Labs’ Jaguar, keeps the number three spot. In fact, the top 10 wasn’t shaken up at all since the last TOP500 list dropped in June. But that won’t last.

ORNL’s Jaguar is currently undergoing an upgrade that should lift it to 10 to 20 petaflops late next year or early in 2013, which--all other things remaining equal--will push it past both Tinahe-1A and K to become the fastest computer in the world once more. The upgrade will bestow upon Jaguar a new name--Titan--as well as an emerging kind of technological edge in the form of graphics processing units, or GPUs.

We’ve been writing a lot about the incorporation of GPUs into supercomputing here lately, mostly because they are a relatively cheap and simple means of boosting the speed of conventional processors by adding a parallel computing aspect that can juggle more than one task simultaneously. Where a traditional CPU can have up to 16 computing cores, a GPU can have hundreds. That means that for certain kinds of calculations a GPU can divide and conquer in ways that CPUs cannot, pushing GPU-augmented systems to blistering speeds.

GPUs as supercomputer accelerators have really only been around for a few years, but according to the team over at NVIDIA they have now found their way into 35 systems on the TOP500, three of which are in the top 5. At the beginning of last year, there were less than 10 systems taking advantage of GPU acceleration. As the world’s biggest computers continue to incorporate them, we will likely see more existing systems take big leaps forward in terms of speed--and perhaps see more volatility at the top of the list.

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5 Comments

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Hethos

11/15/11 at 10:35 am

Finally, an approach at GPU computing. I've been waiting for this to happen.

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quasi44

11/17/11 at 4:48 pm

These blistering speeds and awesome raw computational capabilities are real cool to READ ABOUT OTHERS HAVING, but it really SUKKS that us lowly Americans, who've put TRILLIONS into the information age's development; have ZERO ACCESS to any of it. We live today in the day where those citizens in Asian countries can go down to the store and get a PC that has 5000 times the capability as soon as they boot up. So President Obama SAYS that he wants Americans to dig in and get creative in the face of our economic problems...but here we are, limited to the same old bs as it applies to speeds and capabilities that come from it. WE are the new third world because of stupid attempts at 'control' that aren't even needed for 99.9% of those of us that use our computers for things more serious than games. Asia explodes at a geometric rate each day while we just plain do not. American = slave, or at least no better than servant, without speed. These computers here, no matter how sophisticated they become, won't be matching the creative potential of hundreds of millions of humans any time soon, correct? But if the humans are artificially kept down, it'll definitely come someday. A few years back I read somewhere that the sum of human knowledge was compounding on itself every two months in our modern computer age societies. I submit that it's compounding considerably faster in Asia right now than here. And we just plain do not have that many people.

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ct451

11/22/11 at 4:54 am

They've been tooting about using GPUs to do other processing for a while now. It all depends on the kind of computation you have to perform. Counting everything in one bucket is not an accurate indication or processing power but I guess more is better.

@quasi44. it's not always about top speed. it's about balance. asian countries are fast advancing but only because they lacked that opportunity all this time. I bet someone was saying the same for Japan a few decades back... but they peaked and that is that.

When society gets saturated with everything, new things don't make much impact. Like 3D movies and HD tv, it's mostly fluff if you still enjoy Gilligan's Island. Same hold true for computing power. I went from no processing power to an 8088 way back when. 15+ upgrades later and I still think I had more fun tweaking that one than every other one ever since.

It's the same thing that happens to immigrants coming to america. the first generation take advantages of the opportunities but by the 3rd their drive dies and they turn into lazy bums like the rest.

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quasi44

11/29/11 at 5:46 pm

@ ct451: There are a few things that really are all about speed. One huge glaring area that is totally dependent on raw speed in all computer operations is stocks and securities trading. As of today, there are more of each of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indian peoples that use OUR stock markets to trade in than we even have people. Not computer-literate people, not stock market savvy people, but people overall. And ALL OF THEM are computer literate AND stock market savvy. And THEY get to do their trades faster than we can. So the next time you see the stock market take a big hit at opening or just before the end of the day even though the live tv or radio broadcasts SAID that there was a good day today; you might just ask who ACTUALLY had the good day-and now owns more of America than before. Just because it doesn't mean your job on the chopping block today, don't go thinking it won't mean just that tomorrow. Cause that would be just stupid.

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quasi44

11/29/11 at 5:52 pm

@ ct451 again; Oh yeah, another thing about computer speed. If a hacker in Japan or somewhere decides to do YOU today, and you are sittin at home doing whatever; secure in the "knowledge" that your wimpy assed antivirus scanner has your back and will keep prying eyes out of your personal info-think again, because your antivirus scanner has to have time it doesn't have to pull it off.

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