Blue Planet: Science-Driven Computer Architecture
Creating Science-Driven Computer Architecture:
The "Blue Planet" Proposal
Twice the sustained capability of the Earth Simulator at half the cost
In recent years scientific computing in America has been handicapped by its
dependence on hardware that is designed and optimized for commercial applications.
The performance of the recently completed Earth Simulator in Japan, which is
five times faster than the fastest American supercomputer, dramatically exposed the seriousness
of this problem. Typical scientific applications are now able to extract only
5 to 10 percent of the power of American supercomputers built from commercial
web and data servers. By contrast, the design of the Earth Simulator makes 30
to 50 percent of its power accessible to the majority of types of scientific
calculations.
The Ultrascale Simulation for Science
website provides information about the challenge posed by the Earth Simulator
and the emerging U.S. response to that challenge.
Lawrence Berkeley and Argonne national laboratories, in close collaboration
with IBM, have responded to the challenge with a proposal for a new program
to bring into existence a new class of computational capability in the United
States that is optimal for science. Our strategic proposal, "Creating
Science-Driven Computer Architecture: A New Path to Scientific Leadership,"
envisions a new type of development partnership with computer vendors that goes
beyond the mere evaluation of the offerings that those vendors are currently
planning for the next decade.
This comprehensive strategy includes development partnerships with multiple
vendors, in which teams of scientific applications specialists and computer
scientists will work with computer architects from major U.S. vendors to create
hardware and software environments that will allow scientists to extract the
maximum performance and capability from the hardware.
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Blue Planet was born here:
At a two-day workshop in August 2002, a team of Argonne, Berkeley Lab,
and IBM scientists developed the fundamental concepts of Virtual Vector
Architecture (ViVA), potentially redefining supercomputing in America.
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The cost of scientific supercomputing is also an issue of national strategic
importance. The strategy we propose to implement will pursue at least three
options:
- At the highest cost per peak teraflop/s, the first option will involve custom
components at all levels in an architecture known to be successful in scientific
applications, parallel vector processing. The initial stages of this
effort have been announced with the evaluation of a beta-test version of the
Cray X1 at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory.
- At half this price and with the promise of sustainably high cost-effectiveness,
the second option will involve commercial microprocessors in a new architecture
that will be programmable in the same way as the first option, ViVA or
Virtual Vector Architecture. IBM will partner with Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory to implement early versions of this architecture and deliver
Blue Planet, a 160 teraflop/s mature
implementation in the second half of 2005.
- At the lowest cost per peak teraflop/s, the third option will be based on
"system-on-a-chip" architecture that is being explored most visibly
in the IBM Blue Gene project. This architecture
is arguably the most promising for reaching the petaflop/s goal of this proposal;
however, its suitability for general scientific use has not yet been demonstrated.
But at half the cost of option 2 and one quarter the cost of option 1, this
is path is extremely cost-effective to pursue and provides the best long-term
bet currently known to the scientific community. IBM will partner with Argonne
National Laboratory to develop new expressions of this architecture and deliver
a 180 teraflop/s implementation appropriate for general scientific exploitation
in 2005.
Option 2 will provide twice the sustained capability of the Earth Simulator
at half the cost. Option 3 will provide a new architecture family for
scientific computing and one that makes a definitive step towards cost-effective
petaflop/s computers with high sustained levels of performance.
In response to the High End
Computing Revitalization Task Force (HECRTF) Outreach, the Berkeley Lab-Argonne
proposal was rewritten in May 2003 with the participation of Lawrence Livermore,
Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, Sandia, and Los Alamos national laboratories.
The revised version of "Creating
Science-Driven Computer Architecture" and HECRTF
white papers can be found here.
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