world's top I brain I act super
computing powers pandemic computing
twice a year the world's fastest
supercomputers take a test to see which
is top of class these hundred million
dollar machines usually run on hundreds
of thousands of processors occupy
warehouse floors gobble up copious
amounts of energy and crunch numbers at
an ungodly pace all that computing is
directed at some of humanity's toughest
challenges with the likes of advanced
climate modeling or protein simulations
to help cure diseases for the last two
years the u.s. is summit was the fastest
supercomputer on the planet but this
week a new system took the crown running
2.8 times faster than summit Japan's
fugue a coup notched a blistering 415
peda flips as measured by top-5 hundreds
high-performance Linpack benchmark HPL
that means few gaku completes a simple
mathematical operation 415 quadrillion
times a second
you'd need every person on earth to
complete a calculation a second for 20
months no bathroom breaks to match what
few gaku does in a heartbeat Japan last
claimed the top spot with its k computer
in 2011 developed by the RIKEN Institute
on Fujitsu few gaku took a billion
dollars in the better part of the
ensuing decade to build it's notable
because it doesn't use graphics
processing units GPUs like many of its
competitors and it's the first top
supercomputer to use ARM processors an
efficient chip designed commonly used in
mobile devices in addition to all that
few gaku is insanely fast at machine
learning world's top AI Brainiac while
supercomputers have historically been
mostly about military and scientific
research and Fugue a coup has already
been crunching coronavirus data they're
also increasingly being tailored to run
machine learning algorithms indeed fugue
a cooz predecessor summit was designed
from the ground up with AI in mind
likewise few gak will be an unparalleled
AI Brainiac by a new measure HPL AI
fugue a coup was able to do the kind of
calculations used in today's machine
learning algorithms at a speed of 1.4
exa flips that mark is fastest in the
world exascale computing by more
traditional measure
that is by HP L not HP l AI is the next
big computing milestone anticipated for
over a decade the first such systems are
expected next year or the year after but
from machine learning few gaku is
already there that's significant because
AI researchers are scaling up machine
learning algorithms at a quick pace up a
night for instance recently pulled back
the curtains on a massive new machine
learning algorithm for natural language
processing call GPT 3 the algorithm is
notable for its size one hundred seventy
five billion parameters as well as its
ability to learn and perform a range of
tasks up and I also partnered with
Microsoft to fund and build a
supercomputer dedicated to its machine
learning efforts Microsoft claimed
unofficially that it would be the fifth
fastest supercomputer in the world
though the system has surely slipped a
spot courtesy of few gaku weather
computing power alone is enough to fuel
continued machine learning breakthroughs
as a source of debate but it seems clear
we'll be able to test the hypothesis
supercomputing powers no matter if it's
for the military science or AI the world
of supercomputers is still a competitive
affair China and the US have traded top
supercomputer for almost a decade the US
has recently occupied the top two spots
but China was tops for nearly five years
with its Sun weight eye height and time
to a systems in terms of total top500
machines China eclipsed the u.s. in 2016
and hasn't looked back the country has
226 supercomputers to the US as 114 it's
no match for the US and China but Japan
is no supercomputing slouch the country
claims third for total supercomputers on
the top500 list with 30 and despite
having fewer systems Japan's 530 peda
flips total thanks largely to few gaku
is now just behind China's 565 peda
flips and the u.s. is 644 peda flips
even so few gaku may not occupy the
throne very long to u.s. exascale
systems intel in the Argonne National
Laboratories Aurora and Cray AMD and Oak
Ridge National Laboratories frontier are
due next year
and 1/3 Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratories elcapitan is slated to
arrive the year after China also has
three exascale systems in the works one
of which may be completed next year
pandemic computing as the world awaits
this impending crop of exascale
supercomputers there's plenty to be done
today motivated by the corona virus
pandemic RIKEN put few gaku into
operation a year ahead of its original
2021 launch date the system is being
used for research into treatments as
well as mapping how the virus is
transmitted and can be slowed Satoshi
Matsuoka director of the RIKEN center
for computational science said Fugue a
cruise speed is already on display
referencing a study into kovat
nineteen's infamous spike protein Matsuo
said what would have taken fugue a
cruise predecessor the kei computer days
or weeks took just three hours on few
gaku and it isn't alone the cove at
nineteen high performance computing
consortium has assembled 41
supercomputers capable of 483 pedda
flips to work on 66 projects including
some studying the viruses biology
potential treatments and how to improve
patient care with its early launch few
gaku is technically still in testing
mode but the machine should be fully
operational in 2021 it'll be amazing to
see what it can do at full strength
world's top AI brain I act super
computing powers pandemic computing
twice a
