4 ms·
> Clock speed When people talk about a supercomputer being 'fast' they generally mean FLOPS - floating point operations per seconds, which isn't clock-speed.
by chrisseaton 4y ago
> Clock speed
When people talk about a supercomputer being 'fast' they generally mean FLOPS - floating point operations per seconds, which isn't clock-speed.
- belter 4y agoMy algorithm is single threaded :-) Multiplying the number of processors by the clock speed of the processors, and then multiplying that product by the number of floating-point operations the processors can perform in one second, as done for supercomputers FLOPS, does not help me :-)
- chrisseaton 4y agoWhy would you run a single-threaded algorithm on a supercomputer?
- belter 4y agoBecause some say they are fastest computers in the world ;-)
- chrisseaton 4y agoI think you're possibly misunderstanding what these supercomputers are for. They just aren't designed for whatever single-threaded workload you personally have, so it's not in scope.
- belter 4y agoIt is clear for me what they are for, and why I would not use it for a single-threaded task. I was trolling a little bit, the people who downvoted my measure of speed :-) because the millions of FLOPS of a supercomputer, will help for parallel tasks but will not be "faster" for a common use case. So fastest computer is one thing, most powerful is another.
- O5vYtytb 4y ago"fastest" is accurate. You can get more computation work done in less time given an appropriate workload. No matter what adjective you use, "fastest" or "powerful", you're always within a context of an intended workload. Your argument is a bit like saying the fastest land speed vehicle isn't really the fastest because you can't go to the grocery store with it.
- stonogo 4y agoYou don't get to call the supercar slow because your driver doesn't know how to change gears.
- _Wintermute 4y agoYou say this, but unfortunately I've encountered a few life-scientists who think their single threaded R code will run faster because they've requested 128 cores and 4 GPUs.
- jabl 4y ago> My algorithm is single threaded :-) And why should your algorithm be the benchmark for supercomputer performance, rather than something that is at least somewhat related [1] to the workloads those machines run? [1] We can of course argue endlessly that HPL is no longer a very representative benchmark for supercomputer workloads, but I digress.
- belter 4y agoMy initial argument since the beginning of this thread, is that it's the most powerful computer not the fastest, as it will not be, for the case for some single threaded task. Not really sure what is so controversial about it...:-)
- chrisseaton 4y ago> as it will not be, for the case for some single threaded task Nobody but you is confused about this.
- belter 4y agoIt's not confusion, is about clarifying that "fast" is contextual...
- blackoil 4y agoMore than your algorithm, seems you are on the wrong thread.