A new supercomputer called Titan, which uses microchips more usually used for videogaming to crunch numbers for climate studies, models of advanced materials and alternatives to petrol, has claimed the title of the world’s most powerful computer.
The machine, built by Cray at the US government’s Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee, has seized the top spot in the Top500, a
closely-watched global league of the fastest supercomputers.
It is 10 times more powerful than the lab’s last supercomputer, Jaguar, which
led the world as recently as 2009.
Titan was measured at 17.59 petaflops – or 17.59 thousand trillion
calculations per second – beating the previous record of 16.32 petaflops,
held by Sequoia, a supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in California, which simulates nuclear attacks. It had reclaimed the crown
for the United States earlier this year from the K supercomputer in Japan.
The new champion contains almost 19,000 processing nodes and 710 terabytes of
memory. As well as a 16-core AMD CPU, each node contains an Nvidia GPU
accelerator, a specially-adapted version of processor technology originally
developed for the video gaming market.
Supercomputers are increasingly incorporating GPUs, which consume less power
for more processing power compared to CPUs because their "parallel"
architecture allows them to perform many calculations at once. Firms such as
Nvidia have moved into supercomputing in response to demand from scientists.
One challenge in supercomputers today is power consumption," said Jeff
Nichols of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“Combining GPUs and CPUs in a single system requires less power than CPUs alone and is a responsible move toward lowering our carbon footprint. Titan will provide unprecedented computing power for research in energy, climate change, materials and other disciplines to enable scientific leadership.”
In the Titan system, the CPUs guide and maintain control of the overall model, while the GPUs doe the "heavy lifting".
The Top500 league is published twice a year and is seen as a measure of nations' technological prowess. In recent years China has made its mark; its Tianhe-1A system, which also uses Nvidia GPUs to accelerate its performance.
Overall, China now sits in second, with 72 machines on the list of 500, ahead of all except the United States, which remains out in front with 251 entries. Britain lead Europe with 24 machines, compared to 21 and 20 for Germany and France respectively.
“Combining GPUs and CPUs in a single system requires less power than CPUs alone and is a responsible move toward lowering our carbon footprint. Titan will provide unprecedented computing power for research in energy, climate change, materials and other disciplines to enable scientific leadership.”
In the Titan system, the CPUs guide and maintain control of the overall model, while the GPUs doe the "heavy lifting".
The Top500 league is published twice a year and is seen as a measure of nations' technological prowess. In recent years China has made its mark; its Tianhe-1A system, which also uses Nvidia GPUs to accelerate its performance.
Overall, China now sits in second, with 72 machines on the list of 500, ahead of all except the United States, which remains out in front with 251 entries. Britain lead Europe with 24 machines, compared to 21 and 20 for Germany and France respectively.
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