K computer
Encyclopedia
The K computer – named for the Japanese word , which stands for 10 quadrillion
– is a supercomputer
being produced by Fujitsu
at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science
campus in Kobe
, Japan
. In June 2011, TOP500
ranked K the world's fastest supercomputer, with a rating of over 8 petaflops, and in November 2011, K became the first computer to top 10 petaflops. It is expected to become fully operational in November 2012.
Project Committee announced that K scored a LINPACK
record with a performance of 8.162 petaflops, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time; it achieved this performance with a computing efficiency ratio of 93.0%. The previous record holder was the Chinese
National University of Defense Technology
's Tianhe-1A
, which performed at 2.507 petaflops. The TOP500 list is revised semiannually, and the rankings change frequently, indicating the speed at which computing power is increasing. In November 2011, RIKEN reported that K had become the first supercomputer to exceed 10 petaflops, achieving a LINPACK performance of 10.51 quadrillion computations per second with a computing efficiency ratio of 93.2%. K received top-ranking in all four performance benchmarks at the 2011 HPC Challenge Awards
.
s packed in 864 cabinets, for a total of 705,024 cores, manufactured by Fujitsu with 45 nm
CMOS
technology. Each cabinet contains 96 computing nodes, in addition to 6 I/O nodes. Each computing node contains a single processor and 16 GB of memory. The computer's water cooling system is designed to minimize failure rate
and power consumption.
based on the open-source Open MPI
library. Users can create application programs adapted to either a one-, two-, or three-dimensional torus network.
with parallel/distributed functions, and provides users with an automatic staging
function for moving files between global and local file systems. Fujitsu developed an optimized parallel file system based on Lustre
, called Fujitsu Exabyte File System, scalable to several hundred petabytes.
, which is 29.8% more efficient than China's NUDT TH MPP (ranked #2 – 2011/06) and 225.8% more efficient than Oak Ridge's Jaguar-Cray XT5-HE (ranked #3 – 2011/06). This efficiency rating still falls far short of the 2097.2 GFlops/kWatt supercomputer record set by the (currently 109th-fastest) IBM's NNSA/SC Blue Gene/Q Prototype 2 using the PowerPC A2
. The average power consumption of a TOP 10 system is 4.3 MW and the average efficiency is 463.7 GFlop/kW. According to Jack Dongarra
, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee
, and a compiler of the TOP500 list, the K computer's performance equals "one million linked desktop computers". The computer's annual running costs are estimated at US$10 million.
Quadrillion
Quadrillion may mean either of the two numbers :* 1,000,000,000,000,000 – for all short scale countries; increasingly common meaning in English language usage* 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – for all...
– is a supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
being produced by Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science
RIKEN
is a large natural sciences research institute in Japan. Founded in 1917, it now has approximately 3000 scientists on seven campuses across Japan, the main one in Wako, just outside Tokyo...
campus in Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. In June 2011, TOP500
TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...
ranked K the world's fastest supercomputer, with a rating of over 8 petaflops, and in November 2011, K became the first computer to top 10 petaflops. It is expected to become fully operational in November 2012.
Performance
On 20 June 2011, the TOP500TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...
Project Committee announced that K scored a LINPACK
LINPACK
LINPACK is a software library for performing numerical linear algebra on digital computers. It was written in Fortran by Jack Dongarra, Jim Bunch, Cleve Moler, and Gilbert Stewart, and was intended for use on supercomputers in the 1970s and early 1980s...
record with a performance of 8.162 petaflops, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time; it achieved this performance with a computing efficiency ratio of 93.0%. The previous record holder was the Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
National University of Defense Technology
National University of Defense Technology
National University of Defense Technology is a comprehensive national key university based in Changsha, Hunan Province, China.It is under the dual supervision of the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Education, designated for Project 211 and Project 985, the two national plans for...
's Tianhe-1A
Tianhe-I
Tianhe-I, Tianhe-1, or TH-1 , in English, "Milky Way Number One", is a supercomputer capable of an Rmax of 2.566 petaFLOPS...
, which performed at 2.507 petaflops. The TOP500 list is revised semiannually, and the rankings change frequently, indicating the speed at which computing power is increasing. In November 2011, RIKEN reported that K had become the first supercomputer to exceed 10 petaflops, achieving a LINPACK performance of 10.51 quadrillion computations per second with a computing efficiency ratio of 93.2%. K received top-ranking in all four performance benchmarks at the 2011 HPC Challenge Awards
HPC Challenge Benchmark
The HPC Challenge Benchmark is a set of benchmarks targeting to test multiple attributes that can contribute substantially to the real-world performance of HPC systems, co-sponsored by the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems program, the United States Department of Energy and the National...
.
Node architecture
As of the November 2011 TOP500 list, the K computer uses 88,128 2.0GHz 8-core SPARC64 VIIIfx processorCentral processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
s packed in 864 cabinets, for a total of 705,024 cores, manufactured by Fujitsu with 45 nm
45 nanometer
Per the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, the 45 nm technology node should refer to the average half-pitch of a memory cell manufactured at around the 2007–2008 time frame....
CMOS
CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits...
technology. Each cabinet contains 96 computing nodes, in addition to 6 I/O nodes. Each computing node contains a single processor and 16 GB of memory. The computer's water cooling system is designed to minimize failure rate
Failure rate
Failure rate is the frequency with which an engineered system or component fails, expressed for example in failures per hour. It is often denoted by the Greek letter λ and is important in reliability engineering....
and power consumption.
Network
The K computer uses a proprietary six-dimensional torus network interconnect called Tofu, and a Tofu-optimized Message Passing InterfaceMessage Passing Interface
Message Passing Interface is a standardized and portable message-passing system designed by a group of researchers from academia and industry to function on a wide variety of parallel computers...
based on the open-source Open MPI
Open MPI
Open MPI is a Message Passing Interface library project combining technologies and resources from several other projects . It is used by many TOP500 supercomputers including Roadrunner, which was the world's fastest supercomputer from June 2008 to November 2009, and K computer, the fastest...
library. Users can create application programs adapted to either a one-, two-, or three-dimensional torus network.
Filesystem
The system adopts a two-level local/global file systemFile system
A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...
with parallel/distributed functions, and provides users with an automatic staging
Disk staging
Disk staging is using disks as an additional, temporary stage of backup process before finally storing backup to tape. Backups stay on disk typically for a day or a week, before being copied to tape in a background process and deleted afterwards....
function for moving files between global and local file systems. Fujitsu developed an optimized parallel file system based on Lustre
Lustre (file system)
Lustre is a massively parallel distributed file system, generally used for large scale cluster computing. The name Lustre is a portmanteau word derived from Linux and cluster...
, called Fujitsu Exabyte File System, scalable to several hundred petabytes.
Power consumption
While the K computer reports the highest total power consumption of any TOP500 supercomputer (9.89 MW – the equivalent of almost 10,000 suburban homes), the computer achieves 824.6 GFlop/kWattPerformance per watt
In computing, performance per watt is a measure of the energy efficiency of a particular computer architecture or computer hardware. Literally, it measures the rate of computation that can be delivered by a computer for every watt of power consumed....
, which is 29.8% more efficient than China's NUDT TH MPP (ranked #2 – 2011/06) and 225.8% more efficient than Oak Ridge's Jaguar-Cray XT5-HE (ranked #3 – 2011/06). This efficiency rating still falls far short of the 2097.2 GFlops/kWatt supercomputer record set by the (currently 109th-fastest) IBM's NNSA/SC Blue Gene/Q Prototype 2 using the PowerPC A2
PowerPC A2
The PowerPC A2 is a massively multicore capable and multithreaded 64-bit Power Architecture processor core designed by IBM using the Power ISA v.2.06 specification. Versions of processors based on the A2 core range from a 2.3 GHz version with 16 cores consuming 65 W to a less powerful, four core...
. The average power consumption of a TOP 10 system is 4.3 MW and the average efficiency is 463.7 GFlop/kW. According to Jack Dongarra
Jack Dongarra
Jack J. Dongarra is a University Distinguished Professor of Computer Sciencein the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee...
, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
, and a compiler of the TOP500 list, the K computer's performance equals "one million linked desktop computers". The computer's annual running costs are estimated at US$10 million.
See also
- IBM SequoiaIBM SequoiaSequoia is a petascale Blue Gene/Q supercomputer being constructed by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration as part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program...
- PleiadesPleiades (supercomputer)Pleiades is a petascale supercomputer built by SGI at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. , it was the world's seventh fastest computer with a peak performance of more than 970 teraflops. After further extensions, Pleiades is scheduled to reach 10 petaflops in 2012.-See...
- Supercomputing in JapanSupercomputing in JapanJapan operates a number of centers for supercomputing which hold world records in speed, with the K computer becoming the world's fastest in June 2011....
- TOP500TOP500The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...
- Tianhe-1