IT/Datacenter & Super Computing News - Page 3

The latest and most important IT/Datacenter & Super Computing news - Page 3.

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D-Wave goes Down Under, Leap quantum cloud service now in Australia

Anthony Garreffa | Jul 20, 2020 9:26 PM CDT

D-Wave Systems Inc. has just announced that it has expanded its Leap quantum cloud service to two new markets: India and Australia.

D-Wave goes Down Under, Leap quantum cloud service now in Australia

This move is a big deal for both India and Australia as it means developers, researchers, and businesses in those countries get access to something quite incredible -- and something not available in their respective countries: access to D-Wave 2000Q quantum computers.

D-Wave Systems recently opened up their D-Wave 2000Q quantum computers over the same Leap quantum cloud service to researchers and scientists to help out in the COVID-19 pandemic. This news now unlocks India and Australia researchers access to use the quantum computers for their tasks.

Continue reading: D-Wave goes Down Under, Leap quantum cloud service now in Australia (full post)

ARM chips power world's fastest supercomputer: 7,299,072 CPU cores

Anthony Garreffa | Jun 23, 2020 12:30 AM CDT

ARM is in the news for all the right reasons today, where first Apple announced plans that it would be transitioning away from Intel -- where it has been a partner for its processors for many years now, to ARM. The second, is that ARM chips now power the world's fastest supercomputer -- and that supercomputer, is insanely fast.

ARM chips power world's fastest supercomputer: 7,299,072 CPU cores

The new RIKEN Center for Computational Science's Fugaku supercomputer packs Fujitsu's new 48-core A64FX system-on-a-chip. It has 158,976 of these 48-core processors, meaning there is a mind boggling 7,299,072 processor cores powering the Fugaku supercomputer. Yeah, 7.29 million CPU cores -- you read that right.

This means the new Fugaku supercomputer is 2.8 times more powerful than the previous #1 supercomputer; Oak Ridge National Lab's Summit supercomputer. Summit has 2,414,592 processor cores with 148 petaflops of computer performance, compared to Fugaku and its game-changing ARM chips pumping out 415 petaflops.

Continue reading: ARM chips power world's fastest supercomputer: 7,299,072 CPU cores (full post)

AMD lends 7 petaflops of compute muscle to researchers for COVID-19

Anthony Garreffa | Jun 2, 2020 6:51 PM CDT

AMD along with its technology partner in Penguin Computing Inc. which is a division of SMART Global Holdings, Inc. have announced that they are lending AMD-powered, high-performance computing (HPC) resources from the AMD HPC Fund for COVID-19 research.

AMD lends 7 petaflops of compute muscle to researchers for COVID-19

The high-performance computing systems will be used by New York University (NYU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Rice University. Others will follow, but these three were the first out of the gate from the AMD HPC Fund. AMD will also contribute a cloud-based system that is powered by AMD EPYC and AMD Radeon Instinct hardware on-site at Penguin Computing.

In total, AMD is donating a rather huge 7 petaflops of compute performance to the fight against COVID-19. AMD president and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, said: "High performance computing technology plays a critical role in modern viral research, deepening our understanding of how specific viruses work and ultimately accelerating the development of potential therapeutics and vaccines".

Continue reading: AMD lends 7 petaflops of compute muscle to researchers for COVID-19 (full post)

NVIDIA amps up fight against COVID-19 with Ampere-based supercomputer

Anthony Garreffa | May 14, 2020 9:28 PM CDT

NVIDIA launched its next generation Ampere GPU architecture during its online GTC 2020 keynote, with company founder and CEO Jensen Huang delivering the GPU Technology Conference 2020 keynote from his house.

NVIDIA amps up fight against COVID-19 with Ampere-based supercomputer

The first GPU on the Ampere architecture announced was the new A100, which you can read all about right here -- as well as the new DGX A100 supercomputer, which you can read about here. The new DGX A100 supercomputer is an absolutely beast, rolling out as a third-generation AI supercomputer from NVIDIA super-charged by the Ampere GPU architecture and ridiculously fast A100 GPU.

NVIDIA's new DGX A100 supercomputer is now helping the fight against COVID-19, with Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at Argonne, explaining: "We're using America's most powerful supercomputers in the fight against COVID-19, running AI models and simulations on the latest technology available, like the NVIDIA DGX A100".

Continue reading: NVIDIA amps up fight against COVID-19 with Ampere-based supercomputer (full post)

AMD, NVIDIA, and NWSC Project join the HPC COVID-19 Consortium

Anthony Garreffa | Apr 6, 2020 9:11 PM CDT

AMD and NVIDIA have just joined the HPC COVID-19 Consortium, with the White House supercomputing partnership that is joining US tech companies together for the effort.

AMD, NVIDIA, and NWSC Project join the HPC COVID-19 Consortium

The HPC COVID-19 Consortium is a push by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the US Department of Energy, and IBM teaming with the US government, tech industry, and academic leaders who are volunteering free compute time and resources to COVID-19 researchers.

Researchers wanting to tap untold amounts of supercomputing power can do so by applying to the HPC COVID-19 Consortium, and if approved, will receive access to resources to help super-speed their research. 4th Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Michael Kratsios, also said that there are over 402 Petaflops across 105,000 nodes, 3.5 million CPU cores, and 41,000 GPUs -- and these numbers are only increasing.

Continue reading: AMD, NVIDIA, and NWSC Project join the HPC COVID-19 Consortium (full post)

D-Wave offer free access to quantum computers for COVID-19 researchers

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 31, 2020 7:30 PM CDT

D-Wave Systems has announced that it is offering immediate, and free access to its quantum computers to anyone who is working on responses to COVID-19.

D-Wave offer free access to quantum computers for COVID-19 researchers

The company said that its partners and customers in Kyocera Corporation, NEC Solution Innovators, Menten AI and Volkswagen and others will also be providing engineering teams that will assist researchers in using the quantum computers, in order to formulate problems and hopefully find solutions to COVID-19.

D-Wave Systems will be providing access to its quantum computers through tis Leap 2 quantum cloud service, offering it to anyone working on COVID-19 response in the United States, and across 35 countries throughout Europe and Asia. D-Wave Systems explained: "Leap 2 includes the hybrid solver service designed to bring both classical and quantum resources to quickly and precisely solve highly complex problems with up to 10,000 fully connected variables".

Continue reading: D-Wave offer free access to quantum computers for COVID-19 researchers (full post)

US Navy supercomputer: 290,304 CPU cores, 590TB RAM, 14PB storage

Anthony Garreffa | Feb 18, 2020 7:52 PM CST

AMD has secured itself another design win for a crazy-specced supercomputer, where its kick ass EPYC Rome CPUs will power the US Navy's new Cray Shasta supercomputer.

US Navy supercomputer: 290,304 CPU cores, 590TB RAM, 14PB storage

The new Cray Shasta supercomputer will find a new home with the US Navy's Department of Defense Supercomputing Resource Center (DSRC), where it will become a part of the High Performance Computing Modernization Program. It packs some serious computing power, with a peak theoretical computing capability of 12.8 PetaFLOPS.

This is all thanks to:

Continue reading: US Navy supercomputer: 290,304 CPU cores, 590TB RAM, 14PB storage (full post)

UK slaps down $1.6 billion for world's fastest weather supercomputer

Jak Connor | Feb 18, 2020 1:06 AM CST

UK's weather service called the Met Office has announced that it will be spending a whopping 1.2 billion pounds (USD$1.6 billion) on the world's fastest weather supercomputer.

UK slaps down $1.6 billion for world's fastest weather supercomputer

According to the announcement, the Met Office will be purchasing the world's most powerful weather supercomputer that is estimated to be ten times the cost of their current one called Cray XC40. The new weather supercomputer will also have upgraded accuracy that blows UK's current forecaster out of the water. The new supercomputer will create a "digital twin" of our atmosphere with data and be able to create forcasts for area's that are just down to 1,000 meters (62 miles) in diameter.

This is impressive when compared to the current systems 10km forecast diameter. The report also states that the new weather supercomputer will go into service in 2022, and at the time of installation it will already be six times more powerful than the current Cray XC40. Power level jumps won't stop there, as in five years time the new supercomputer will get an upgrade bumping it up in performance by a further three times. This means that by the time the new supercomputer is at full power it will be nearly 20 times more powerful than the UK's current machine.

Continue reading: UK slaps down $1.6 billion for world's fastest weather supercomputer (full post)

Big Red 200 supercomputer: 86,016 cores, 172,032 threads + Ampere GPUs

Anthony Garreffa | Feb 1, 2020 8:28 PM CST

Indiana University is currently building out its exciting new Big Red 200 supercomputer, which will have an insane amount of computing power, as well as some delicious new technology including AMD EPYC CPUs and unreleased NVIDIA Ampere GPUs. Check out the video of the initial first phase build:

Big Red 200 supercomputer: 86,016 cores, 172,032 threads + Ampere GPUs

The university is celebrating its 200th year, which is where the name 'Big Red 200' comes from (red is also Indiana University's color scheme). Inside, Big Red 200 packs 672 dual-socket nodes that will be powered by AMD's kick ass EPYC 7742 'Rome' CPUs that each pack 64 cores and 128 threads for a total of yes-it-can-run-crysis 86,016 cores and 172,032 threads.

The first phase sees the CPUs being deployed thanks to AMD EPYC 7742 chips, but the university had the stars aligned as they were offered to use NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GPUs. At first, Indiana University was going to use NVIDIA's current-gen Tesla V100 GPUs that are based on the Volta GPU architecture -- but Brad Wheeler, the vice president for information technology and chief information officer at IU explained they "decided to take the machine in two phases" when NVIDIA offered something special "at the last minute".

Continue reading: Big Red 200 supercomputer: 86,016 cores, 172,032 threads + Ampere GPUs (full post)

Intel's new Horse Ridge chip: new cryogenic chip for quantum computing

Anthony Garreffa | Jan 5, 2020 12:30 AM CST

Intel recently announced its new codename Horse Ridge chip, a new cryogenic control chip that will assist quantum computing systems. The new chip is being made available to commercially viable quantum computers, with the company co-developing the Horse Ridge chip between Intel Labs and QuTech.

Intel's new Horse Ridge chip: new cryogenic chip for quantum computing

Horse Ridge is an exciting cryogenic control chip that is capable of controlling multiple qubits (quantum bits) at the same time, with Intel explaining that this specific part of a quantum computer system is an "essential feature". Quantum computing is still in its early days, with Intel putting its efforts into the interconnects and control electronics -- and not the production of the qubits.

Right now, quantum computers use existing electronic tools to link quantum systems inside of a cryogenic refrigerator -- this actually holds back qubit performance so Intel is being Intel and wants to push that. Current quantum chips and computers require absolute zero cooling to work, while Horse Ridge can actually work at just over absolute zero -- 4 Kelvin.

Continue reading: Intel's new Horse Ridge chip: new cryogenic chip for quantum computing (full post)