Friday, November 22, 2013

Back from Supercomputing/SC 2013

Took a break from blogging and went to Supercomputing/SC 2013 in Denver for some badly needed R&R. Ha, guess what I found from China's National University of Defense Technology there. 


Supercomputing power is being concentrated in a smaller number of machines, according to the latest Top500 list of high-performance computers. Keepers of the list are uncertain how to parse that trend.

The first 17 entrants in the latest supercomputer ranking produce half of all the supercomputing power on the list, which totaled over 250 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second), noted Erich Strohmaier, an organizer of the Top500 twice-yearly ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, speaking at a Tuesday evening panel at the SC2013 supercomputer conference,

The first place entrant alone, the Chinese Tianhe-2 system, brought in 33.86 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second).

“The list has become very top heavy in the last couple of years,” Strohmaier said. “In the last five years, we have seen a drastic concentration of performance capabilities in large centers.”
http://www.idgconnect.com/abstract/4700/sc13-top500-growing-inequality-supercomputing-power











No comments: