By: David Kanter (dkanter.delete@this.realworldtech.com), January 20, 2017 2:55 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
gallier2 (gallier2.delete@this.gmx.de) on January 20, 2017 7:48 am wrote:
> http://insidehpc.com/2017/01/cray-develop-arm-based-isambard-supercomputer-uk-met-office/
The original Mont-blanc project had an idiotic abomination, an Exynos-based supercomputer. AFAICT, it has gone nowhere.
While Mont Blanc still appears to be pushing ARM, they have found a much more effective candidate - ThunderX2.
That makes at least three supercomputers using ARM. Honestly, I'm skeptical of a Cavium-based system, until we see ThunderX2 actually hit targets. So far Cavium has a bad track record for delivering on their promises. However, I am very intrigued by Fujitsu's promised Exascale system. They have a good fabric and understand the system architecture in a way that IBM, Intel, or Nvidia do, and Cavium does not.
The three ARM systems are all 'national' machines and not bid in a competitive fashion (although that is true of many HPC systems). I think they will be proving grounds, and if vendors can show real success there, they may be able to bid for more competitive systems.
One issue I see is that GPUs tend to require even greater performance from the host CPU to keep up with Amdahl's Law. That means that a larger number of cores is less attractive compared to Power9 and Skylake. Also, I expect that server CPUs will start using high-performance DRAM more commonly. Nvidia would love to see an alternative to Xeon, but so far, they don't have one.
David
> http://insidehpc.com/2017/01/cray-develop-arm-based-isambard-supercomputer-uk-met-office/
The original Mont-blanc project had an idiotic abomination, an Exynos-based supercomputer. AFAICT, it has gone nowhere.
While Mont Blanc still appears to be pushing ARM, they have found a much more effective candidate - ThunderX2.
That makes at least three supercomputers using ARM. Honestly, I'm skeptical of a Cavium-based system, until we see ThunderX2 actually hit targets. So far Cavium has a bad track record for delivering on their promises. However, I am very intrigued by Fujitsu's promised Exascale system. They have a good fabric and understand the system architecture in a way that IBM, Intel, or Nvidia do, and Cavium does not.
The three ARM systems are all 'national' machines and not bid in a competitive fashion (although that is true of many HPC systems). I think they will be proving grounds, and if vendors can show real success there, they may be able to bid for more competitive systems.
One issue I see is that GPUs tend to require even greater performance from the host CPU to keep up with Amdahl's Law. That means that a larger number of cores is less attractive compared to Power9 and Skylake. Also, I expect that server CPUs will start using high-performance DRAM more commonly. Nvidia would love to see an alternative to Xeon, but so far, they don't have one.
David
