4 ms·

Yeah, Intel is ahead of everyone in SIMD width (until someone makes a chip with like 2048-bit ARM SVE :D). But still, that didn't prevent POWER9 from being in

Yeah, Intel is ahead of everyone in SIMD width (until someone makes a chip with like 2048-bit ARM SVE :D). But still, that didn't prevent POWER9 from being in one of the largest supercomputers. And super wide SIMD has its disadvantages (hello AVX Offset downclocking)

mshook 7y ago
You have a point but then Intel has been crushing it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Processor_families_in_TOP500_supercomputers.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Processor_families_in_TOP... They have cornered at least 85% of that market... And most likely, it's the nVidia connection with NVLink which matters most in there if we talk about SIMD... They said it better than I could (in June of 2018): https://www.top500.org/news/new-gpu-accelerated-supercomputers-change-the-balance-of-power-on-the-top500/ https://www.top500.org/news/new-gpu-accelerated-supercompute... In the latest TOP500 rankings announced this week, 56 percent of the additional flops were a result of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs running in new supercomputers – that according to the Nvidians, who enjoy keeping track of such things. In this case, most of those additional flops came from three top systems new to the list: Summit, Sierra, and the AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI). Summit, the new TOP500 champ, pushed the previous number one system, the 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight, into second place with a Linpack score of 122.3 petaflops. Summit is powered by IBM servers, each one equipped with two Power9 CPUs and six V100 GPUs. According to NVIDIA, 95 percent of the Summit’s peak performance (187.7 petaflops) is derived from the system’s 27,686 GPUs. (emphasis mine, Summit being a POWER9 supercomputer with 4608 nodes with 2 POWER9 and 6 V100 in each)
- classichasclass 7y ago
  I think that's more reflective of Intel cornering at least 85% of virtually every market (except, notoriously, mobile) than of some special suitability for HPC.
  - mshook 7y ago
    I agree, I was just saying all traditional supercomputer manufacturers lost that battle, including POWER but it's the last standing member from the old guard...

mshook 7y ago

You have a point but then Intel has been crushing it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Processor_families_in_TOP500_supercomputers.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Processor_families_in_TOP... They have cornered at least 85% of that market... And most likely, it's the nVidia connection with NVLink which matters most in there if we talk about SIMD... They said it better than I could (in June of 2018): https://www.top500.org/news/new-gpu-accelerated-supercomputers-change-the-balance-of-power-on-the-top500/ https://www.top500.org/news/new-gpu-accelerated-supercompute... In the latest TOP500 rankings announced this week, 56 percent of the additional flops were a result of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs running in new supercomputers – that according to the Nvidians, who enjoy keeping track of such things. In this case, most of those additional flops came from three top systems new to the list: Summit, Sierra, and the AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI). Summit, the new TOP500 champ, pushed the previous number one system, the 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight, into second place with a Linpack score of 122.3 petaflops. Summit is powered by IBM servers, each one equipped with two Power9 CPUs and six V100 GPUs. According to NVIDIA, 95 percent of the Summit’s peak performance (187.7 petaflops) is derived from the system’s 27,686 GPUs. (emphasis mine, Summit being a POWER9 supercomputer with 4608 nodes with 2 POWER9 and 6 V100 in each)

classichasclass 7y ago
I think that's more reflective of Intel cornering at least 85% of virtually every market (except, notoriously, mobile) than of some special suitability for HPC.
- mshook 7y ago
  I agree, I was just saying all traditional supercomputer manufacturers lost that battle, including POWER but it's the last standing member from the old guard...