Monday, June 19th 2017
U.S.A. Loses 3rd Place in TOP500 Supercomputer Standings... To Switzerland?
The United States has been being pushed down in the TOP500 standings for some time courtesy China, whom has taken the 1st and 2nd place seats from the US with their Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2 Supercomputers (at a Linpack performance of 93 and 33.9 Petaflops, respectively). It seemed though the crown was stolen from America, 3rd place was relatively safe for the former champs. Not so. America has been pushed right off the podium in the latest TOP500 refresh... not by China though, but Switzerland?
No, it wasn't my first guess either. Aparently the land of high mountains and hidden inaccessible bank accounts (if you subscribe to stereotypes, anyways) has taken 3rd place with an upgrade to its "Piz Daint" Cray XC50-based Supercomputer which now ranks at 19.6 Petaflops, pushing the United State's Department Of Energy's "Titan" system down to a measly 4th place, at 17.6 Petaflops. It is worth noting that this is the same rate at which the Titan ran at when it was installed in 2012, meaning the system has never been upgraded in a way that would net it more performance.
The upgrade to Piz Daint (which enabled it to leapfrog 5 entries to the number 3 position, by the way) came in the form of a GPU-package from NVIDIA. Piz Daint had its Tesla K20X GPU's swapped for a new set of Tesla P100's, making it not only the #3 supercomputer in the world, but the fastest GPU-based supercomputer in the entire world.
So yes, while the swiss have drawn blood, America is far from underrepresented in the TOP500. To the red-white-and-blue's credit, the U.S.A. supplies the vast majority of hardware powering the systems in the TOP500 listings. Intel based solutions power 464 out of the TOP500's well, 500. IBM's POWER based systems power an additional 21 Systems, and AMD has its Opteron line present in 6 systems. That means the US stills supplies the actual parts to build 491/500 of the supercomputer solutions in the TOP500. If you want to talk about the raw power available across all those systems, I think it's safe to say they clobber China quite readily at least in manufactured muscle, to their credit.
Still, it is clear that not all is well in the US of A's standings. This is the first time they have not secured one of the top 3 places in the TOP500 since a small blip in 1996 where Japan briefly stole all three seats (and briefly, mind you).
Something will likely need to change if the USA wants to maintain its dominance long-term.
Source:
TOP500.org
The upgrade to Piz Daint (which enabled it to leapfrog 5 entries to the number 3 position, by the way) came in the form of a GPU-package from NVIDIA. Piz Daint had its Tesla K20X GPU's swapped for a new set of Tesla P100's, making it not only the #3 supercomputer in the world, but the fastest GPU-based supercomputer in the entire world.
So yes, while the swiss have drawn blood, America is far from underrepresented in the TOP500. To the red-white-and-blue's credit, the U.S.A. supplies the vast majority of hardware powering the systems in the TOP500 listings. Intel based solutions power 464 out of the TOP500's well, 500. IBM's POWER based systems power an additional 21 Systems, and AMD has its Opteron line present in 6 systems. That means the US stills supplies the actual parts to build 491/500 of the supercomputer solutions in the TOP500. If you want to talk about the raw power available across all those systems, I think it's safe to say they clobber China quite readily at least in manufactured muscle, to their credit.
Still, it is clear that not all is well in the US of A's standings. This is the first time they have not secured one of the top 3 places in the TOP500 since a small blip in 1996 where Japan briefly stole all three seats (and briefly, mind you).
Something will likely need to change if the USA wants to maintain its dominance long-term.
27 Comments on U.S.A. Loses 3rd Place in TOP500 Supercomputer Standings... To Switzerland?
Let's make murica great again?
Welcome to Dumpster Fire Earth 2017
What the previous administration did was trying to turn research University into Uber-liberal voter camp, while cuts funding to scientific research. What current administration is doing is "Let's get rid of all scientific research"
and just try to make the people think the earth is a pizza like hundreds of years ago. :kookoo:
But hey it just was :pimp:switzerland:pimp:
www.marketwired.com/press-release/nvidia-powers-the-worlds-top-13-most-energy-efficient-supercomputers-2222407.htm
Anyway, I'm off to eat a Toblerone.
www.cscs.ch/publications/highlights/2017/piz_daint_one_of_the_most_powerful_supercomputers_in_the_world/index.html
Why can't we just debate the technical merits guys? I mean the thing is running P100 NVIDIA chips. Let's have some good ol' fashioned red vs green here.
EDIT: Oh wait, I forgot, AMD is virtually gone from the TOP500, sadness.
But I agree, why bring up the NSA? Crazy talk.
However it is SUPER hard to write a Titan GPU in grant proposal. It just doesn't look good. :D
They're all eaten by evil supercomputers! :laugh:
The list has gotten huge from facial recognition to IPass tracking, to so much more.garbage. The EPA has been a joke for ages. Colleges waste money like crazy, my buddy works as IT in a Florida college and they waste extra budget every year buying useless stuff because if they dont spend it they wont get the money again because management is retarded like lucent in the 80s-90s.
Government spending on science is loaded with pork and corruption and its something the private sector should do of its own free will you statist.
The DOD has 125bil dollars of waste at a minimum but the DOD tried to hide that report but it came out and you know what politicians want to do? Throw more billions at it. I can tell you my time as a contractor for the DOD was laughable at the amount of inherent waste and fraud and incompetence.
www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.d180b5f92d5b
No where in this massive 2-3 trillion dollar government does it need anymore funding. The waste is horrific. It is 2-3 times larger iirc than the 80s and 90s with nothing really to show.
Take that BS else where please.
www.extremetech.com/extreme/211247-obama-signs-executive-order-to-build-first-ever-exascale-supercomputer
www.top500.org/news/trump-administration-preps-plan-for-huge-cuts-to-department-of-energy/
www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/28/congress-already-eyeing-department-energy-for-spending-cuts.html
Overall it looks like The Department Of Energy spending has remained about average, adjusted for inflation, since the 1960's, with a 5+% drop in the budget this year.
Too bad we can't use some of that $825 BILLION Dollars a year, that we spend on the military, for supercomputing.