DATE:
NOTE NUMBER:
DATE=11/19/02
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTERS
NUMBER=5-52598
BYLINE=DAVID McALARY
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: The I-B-M Corporation is seeking to regain the distinction of building the world's fastest supercomputers. Japan's N-E-C Corporation now holds the distinction. But I-B-M is under contract to the U-S government to build two that together would leave the N-E-C machine far behind in processing speed. In fact, I-B-M says they would be faster than the world's top 500 existing supercomputers combined. David McAlary reports that the feat involves technological challenges.
TEXT: The supercomputer is about to become even more super. I-B-M says the ones it is building for the U-S Department of Energy will have the combined ability to make 467 trillion calculations per second, 10 times more than the N-E-C model.
/// NELSON ACT 1 ///
This is a major jump beyond where we are today.
/// END ACT ///
Mike Nelson is I-B-M's Director of Internet Technology and Strategy.
/// NELSON ACT 2 ///
For the first time we have machines that, according to some scientists, have as much raw processing power as the human brain. These machines will be able to do much more sophisticated modeling of everything from climate to nuclear weapons to D-N-A molecules.
/// END ACT ///
Personal computers for the home or workplace have one or perhaps two microprocessing chips, the brains of the units. But the smaller of the two new I-B-M supercomputers computers will contain more than 12-thousand chips to make 100 trillion calculations per second -- twice as fast as its nearest Japanese competitor. The U-S Department of Energy will use it to simulate the operation of the country's nuclear weapons without having to conduct underground testing.
The bigger supercomputer will have 130-thousand microprocessor chips running more than three times as fast as its partner. It will simulate physical phenomena such as prediction of materials properties, the behavior of high explosives, and the interaction between the atmosphere and pollution. It will store the information equivalent of one billion books.
With so many processors, some are bound to fail. Mr. Nelson says the new systems will be able to work around such failures automatically.
/// NELSON ACT 3 ///
One of the biggest challenges is building a system that can manage itself. So we have had to develop software that can monitor the health of each individual chip and when there's a problem, it actually can call in a backup that can take over the job. So you don't have to shut down the machine and pull out the card with the faulty chip and put in a new card.
/// END ACT ///
Ultra-fast processing is of little use, however, if a supercomputer cannot retrieve data quickly from its memory to work with. University of Tennessee supercomputer expert Jack Dongarra says developing retrieval speeds to support quick processors is another challenge I-B-M faces.
/// DONGARRA ACT 1 ///
It's actually assembling and producing a network that will allow data to be communicated within the computer at high enough rates so that the processors can have the data when they are ready to do the operation. It's that movement of data that is the handicap today in terms of producing high performance machines.
/// END ACT ///
I-B-M is to deliver its new supercomputers by 2004. Whether they remain the fastest for long remains to be seen. N-E-C and the U-S companies Hewlett-Packard and Cray are all competing in this realm. I-B-M's Mike Nelson says one advance that will speed processing is optical technology - communicating signals with glass fibers rather than wire.
/// NELSON ACT 4 ///
That's really the next generation of supercomputing. It means using optical switching and optical networks to link together all the components of the supercomputer. Moving to optical switching could be a factor of 10 or even 100 improvement in the throughput through the system.
/// END ACT ///
The market for supercomputers is tiny compared to that for personal computers. So why does a company like I-B-M make the effort?
/// DONGARRA ACT 2 ///
These companies use this as a research vehicle to help further their technology.
/// END ACT ///
Again, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee.
/// DONGARRA ACT 3 ///
This is a way to build better products, which do in fact trickle down to the things that we use every day.
/// END ACT /// (SIGNED)
NEB/DEM/MAR
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