Mar 2 Speed Capability and Terminology

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Back on this day in computer history in 1993, the Japanese Supercomputer, competes with the Cray Supercomputer, and surpasses it in speed.

Cray found it difficult to accept the fact that his claim to the faster computer since 1986, was being challenged. He volunteered to test the Japanese Supercomputer to see if the claims were true, but never received an invite.

The Fugaku, Another Kanji Alternative For Mount Fuji

This brings back memories because I lived in Japan for five years and learned how to speak, read, and write Japanese. My Japanese school was located one train stop from Tokyo.

Fugaku, identified with the famous, majestic Japanese mountain, Mount Fuji, gained its claim at the RIKEN center for computational science in Kobe, Japan.

So What Is The Fugaku Comprised Of?

Now don’t fall asleep on me because some of this terminology is important to know when you buy your next computer.

Talk about a phenomenal computer. This is what it currently has. But that changes as technology progresses.

  • 158,976 nodes. So what’s a node? A node is a point of intersection or connection within a network, an environment where all devices are accessible through the network. Familiar examples of nodes would be computers and printers.
  • 7.3 million cores. So what is a computer’s core? A core is a small CPU or processor built into one big CPU or a CPU socket. It can independently perform or process all computational tasks. From this perspective, we can consider a core to be a smaller CPU or a smaller processor. Multiple cores run multiple processes at the same time with greater ease, increasing computer performance when multitasking or demands come from behind the scenes powerful apps and programs.
  • Speed of 442petaFLOPS. So what is a petaFLPS? One petaFLOPS is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion) FLOPS, And a gigaflop is bigger because it is a billion floating-point operations per second while a teraflop is one trillion, and a petaflop is a quadrillion. Don’t forget your brains capability. According to Hans Morvec, principal research scientist at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, a human brain's probable processing power is around 100 teraflops or roughly 100 trillion calculations per second.

  • ARM, Acorn RISC Machine, powered. ARM processors are used extensively in consumer electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, multimedia players and other mobile devices, such as wearables.

  • Hybrid memory cubes. Hybrid memory, attached to each of the processors, is a high-performance RAM, Random access memory, interface. None of your programs, files, or Netflix streams would work without RAM, which is your computer's working space.

  • Tofuofu network. The Tofuofu network provides tight integration between all of the nodes in the system. The Fugaku has 158,976 nodes .

  • Fujitsu A64FX microprocessor. The A64FX is a 64-bit ARM architecture microprocessor. A 64-bit processor is a microprocessor with a word size of 64 bits. 64bits is a requirement for memory and data intensive applications such as computer-aided design (CAD) applications, database management systems, technical and scientific applications, and high-performance servers. Windows 10 can run on both 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures.

  • Memory HBM232 gib/node. High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is high-speed used in conjunction with high-performance graphics accelerators, network devices. The advantage of HBM is that it achieves higher bandwidth while using less power.

  • Storage of 1.6 TB NVME SSD/16 nodes (L1), 150 PB shared and Lustre FS (L2). NVMe, nonvolatile memory express, is a new storage access and transport protocol for flash and next-generation solid-state drives, SSDs, that deliver the highest throughput and fastest response times for all types of enterprise workloads.

  • Custom Linus-based kernel Operating System. The kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system that has complete control over everything in the system. It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory, and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. Amazon servers use a Linus based kernel operating system.

  • Cost in US dollars – 1 Billion. Is anyone interested in buying one?

Did You Get This Far? Are You Asking So What?

In case you are curious, the research has been done for you. Now when you hear something about the world’s super computer you can recall at least something about it.

Next time you go shopping for a new computer, brush up on the terminology so you buy a computer with the speed and memory you expect.

May your computer do what you expect today, so you can focus on your online business.

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Recent Comments

11

Quite interesting George, you're doing some real research.

Thanks for sharing

Elizabeth

Glad you find this interesting. Yes it does take research to do this. I am sharpening my research ability.

Enjoy.

Very interesting, George!

Jeff

Thank you.

You're welcome, George!

Jeff

Think I'll have to wait awhile to buy one. :)

We would agree. One billion is a lot of money and for only one computer.

All I can say is, "Wow!!"

A lot of internal computer facts.

I remember when the Cray was the fastest machine. Regarding my computer, it goes faster than I can think so that will do me fine.

Thanks for your comments.
I am sure you do remember the days when we had to sit and wait for the computer to respond. We now have an Intel 7 so the "internal brains" work like a charm.

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