Wu-chun Feng
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Abstract
A supercomputer evokes images of “big iron“ and speed; it is the Formula 1 racecar of computing. As we venture forth into the new millennium, however, I argue that efficiency, reliability, and availability will become the dominant issues by the end of this decade, not only for supercomputing, but also for computing in general.
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- 9. The performance of ASCI Q is extrapolated from the measured performance on a smaller version of the machine with the same architecture. The extrapolation is optimistic; actual performance will likely be somewhat smaller. The power and space numbers for Avalon and Green Destiny are actual measurements, whereas the power and space numbers for the ASCI machines are based on personal communications with system administrators and quoted numbers from the World Wide Web.Google Scholar
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- 12. If Green Destiny+ had been specified in a full configuration--that is, 1.125 GB of memory per node and 160 GB of disk per node--the memory density and disk density would have increased by an order of magnitude to 187,500 MB per square foot and 6,400 GB per square foot, respectively. These numbers will have tremendous implications to Web-server farms and search-engine farms like Yahoo and Google.Google Scholar
- 13. LINPACK, the benchmark used to rank supercomputers in the Top 500 Supercomputer List (http: //www.top500.org), was chosen because it is the only common benchmark result that we have that has been run across the two different machines--Green Destiny and Japanese Earth Simulator.Google Scholar
- 14. We note again that if Green Destiny+ had been specified in a full configuration--1.125 GB of memory per node and 160 GB of disk per node--the memory density and disk density would have increased by an order of magnitude to 187,500 MB per square foot and 6,400 GB per square foot, respectively.Google Scholar
- 15. The Japanese Earth Simulator actually occupies two floors, each 50 meters by 60 meters (or 35,145 square feet) in dimension. Thus, its footprint is effectively 2* 35,145 = 70,290 square feet.Google Scholar
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Index Terms
- Making a Case for Efficient Supercomputing: It is time for the computing community to use alternative metrics for evaluating performance.
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