By: Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org), January 20, 2017 8:55 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
David Kanter (dkanter.delete@this.realworldtech.com) on January 20, 2017 2:55 pm wrote:
> 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
>
The mandate of the Mont Blanc project is to explore alternative paths to a supercomputer. They may not succeed in some of the prototypes along the way, but what they are doing is not unjustified, and it is not driven purely by a moronic nationalism:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/06/16/mont-blanc-sets-the-stage-for-arm-hpc/
Moreover, as I have pointed out before, the world consists of many compute tasks, some of which look very different from dense linear algebra. For example #81, Monty Pi-thon, on the Graph 500 is built out of a number of Raspberry Pi's, and there are a few other such weird machines (some based on ARM) on the list.
http://www.graph500.org/results_nov_2016
> 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
>
The mandate of the Mont Blanc project is to explore alternative paths to a supercomputer. They may not succeed in some of the prototypes along the way, but what they are doing is not unjustified, and it is not driven purely by a moronic nationalism:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2015/06/16/mont-blanc-sets-the-stage-for-arm-hpc/
Moreover, as I have pointed out before, the world consists of many compute tasks, some of which look very different from dense linear algebra. For example #81, Monty Pi-thon, on the Graph 500 is built out of a number of Raspberry Pi's, and there are a few other such weird machines (some based on ARM) on the list.
http://www.graph500.org/results_nov_2016
