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Also, would those 550k Blackwell have good FP64 performance? How would one even compare them?
by ziofill 3mo ago
Also, would those 550k Blackwell have good FP64 performance? How would one even compare them?
- NitpickLawyer 3mo agoYeah, that's true. GPU flops are really impressive in fp16, and more recently fp8 and fp4. When the 40xx GPUs came out, Tim Dettmers had a really cool blog looking into the numbers, and for fp8 one 4090 GPU had enough flops to match the best supercomputer somewhere in the 2000s, with an 8x 4090 build being top for a few years more. It's insane. But it gets nowhere close on fp64, where most of the physics simulations and other usual supercomputer tasks shine.
- fragmede 3mo agoOther than weather simulations and nuclear explosions, what other supercomputer tasks are out there?
- NitpickLawyer 3mo agoAlthough probably underfunded compared to the two that you listed, cosmology is probably up there as well. Things like early universe and galaxy formation, megastructures, etc. There's likely also some need for fusion plasma containment and other related simulations.
- jamiejquinn 3mo agoI was surprised to find out that material science uses up a significant amount of the compute time on the big research machines, at least here in the UK. It's both potentially lucrative research and computationally intensive. Combustion is the other big one that hasn't been mentioned but that's... Controversial.
- rbanffy 3mo agoWeather modeling? Physics?
- hulitu 3mo agoBased on the latest attempts to simulate (in LTSpice) Analog Devices or Texas Intruments ICs together with some common transistors, i would say that supercomputers might allow a simulation to converge in a finite amount of time.