4 ms·

Any questions/comments? (AMA)

stonogo 11y ago
When will we get a demonstration with a real interconnect? If the FLOPS/Watt is as good as claimed, why is nobody packaging this as an actual supercomputer?
- adapteva 11y ago
  Epiphany is being considered as the technology that comes "after the next". CPU is the default, then GPU, then "the others". Software is king and shared resource supercomputers have an incredibly long list of legacy software requirements. This is why we are focusing this effort on an application that is pretty dynamic at the moment, machine learning.
- markhahn 11y ago
  because small, slow computers are easy to make power-efficient. the truth is that the processor isn't that interesting, if you're taking a lots-of-wimpy-nodes approach (like BGQ).
  - adapteva 11y ago
    Do you have some ideas/opinions who the industry will contain power consumption with big cores? Current super computers running big brawny cores and GPU accelerators are running at 5 GFLOPS/W at best. (consensus that we need to get to 50 GFLOPS/W).
thatcat 11y ago
The efficiency of these board (Tflops per watt) is pretty amazing, when I first saw this board I imagined it would be used as powerful embedded servers in situations where battery power is required. However, it seems they have a much broader use cases as well. What application will be deployed on this for the live test on May 30th?
- adapteva 11y ago
  It will be an image processing demo. Here's a hint... http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5851 http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5851
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
As a scientist used to running simulations on parallell computers, my immediate response is "show me one use case where this is faster than four sandy bridge core i7 desktops connected with Gb ethernet using OpenMX to get low latency". Even though you can boast a decent core count, those cores are connected through a really crappy high latency network (the internet). Basically, there is no scientist in the world today who doesn't have the funding needed to scrape together four used core i7s and network them. Unless you can significantly beat that performance level, you're not "democratizing access to supercomputing for the scientists that need it" in any meaningful way. If you are significantly faster, even for just one particular application, that should be up front and center on you FAQ.
- adapteva 11y ago
  Are saying that folding@home, BOINC and all the rest is all useless and that all scientists need in to do research is 4 old i7 desktops? As far as the benchmark is concerned, check out this presentation from Ericsson on page 9 concerning FFTs on Xeon and on Epiphany. http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/cse/uploads/FP/EngdalSlides.pdf http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/cse/uploads/FP/EngdalSlides.p...
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    No, the @home stuff is leveraging thousands and millions of computers. You have 18. From the slides you linked, the Epiphany board is 27x slower than a Xeon, so your distributed supercomputer is about as fast as a single desktop with a core i7, assuming you have perfect scaling.
    - gorbachev 11y ago
      This is exactly the same concept as @Home, just with the Parallella board. He will have thousands of those boards in the computing grid.
    - adapteva 11y ago
      The slide stated that one Epiphany core is 27 times slower than one Xeon core. clearly the goal here is to ramp..the 324 cores all came online today. If we don't get to >10,000 cores, then the effort has failed.
plumeria 11y ago
Do you plan to record/stream the Parallella Technical Conference?

When will we get a demonstration with a real interconnect? If the FLOPS/Watt is as good as claimed, why is nobody packaging this as an actual supercomputer?

adapteva 11y ago
Epiphany is being considered as the technology that comes "after the next". CPU is the default, then GPU, then "the others". Software is king and shared resource supercomputers have an incredibly long list of legacy software requirements. This is why we are focusing this effort on an application that is pretty dynamic at the moment, machine learning.
markhahn 11y ago
because small, slow computers are easy to make power-efficient. the truth is that the processor isn't that interesting, if you're taking a lots-of-wimpy-nodes approach (like BGQ).
- adapteva 11y ago
  Do you have some ideas/opinions who the industry will contain power consumption with big cores? Current super computers running big brawny cores and GPU accelerators are running at 5 GFLOPS/W at best. (consensus that we need to get to 50 GFLOPS/W).

thatcat 11y ago

The efficiency of these board (Tflops per watt) is pretty amazing, when I first saw this board I imagined it would be used as powerful embedded servers in situations where battery power is required. However, it seems they have a much broader use cases as well. What application will be deployed on this for the live test on May 30th?

adapteva 11y ago
It will be an image processing demo. Here's a hint... http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5851 http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.5851

semi-extrinsic 11y ago

As a scientist used to running simulations on parallell computers, my immediate response is "show me one use case where this is faster than four sandy bridge core i7 desktops connected with Gb ethernet using OpenMX to get low latency". Even though you can boast a decent core count, those cores are connected through a really crappy high latency network (the internet). Basically, there is no scientist in the world today who doesn't have the funding needed to scrape together four used core i7s and network them. Unless you can significantly beat that performance level, you're not "democratizing access to supercomputing for the scientists that need it" in any meaningful way. If you are significantly faster, even for just one particular application, that should be up front and center on you FAQ.

adapteva 11y ago
Are saying that folding@home, BOINC and all the rest is all useless and that all scientists need in to do research is 4 old i7 desktops? As far as the benchmark is concerned, check out this presentation from Ericsson on page 9 concerning FFTs on Xeon and on Epiphany. http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/cse/uploads/FP/EngdalSlides.pdf http://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/cse/uploads/FP/EngdalSlides.p...
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  No, the @home stuff is leveraging thousands and millions of computers. You have 18. From the slides you linked, the Epiphany board is 27x slower than a Xeon, so your distributed supercomputer is about as fast as a single desktop with a core i7, assuming you have perfect scaling.
  - gorbachev 11y ago
    This is exactly the same concept as @Home, just with the Parallella board. He will have thousands of those boards in the computing grid.
  - adapteva 11y ago
    The slide stated that one Epiphany core is 27 times slower than one Xeon core. clearly the goal here is to ramp..the 324 cores all came online today. If we don't get to >10,000 cores, then the effort has failed.

plumeria 11y ago

Do you plan to record/stream the Parallella Technical Conference?