K computer

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K computer
150px
A cabinet of RIKEN's K computer prototype, manufactured by Fujitsu
Active Operational June 2011
Sponsors MEXT, Japan Japan
Operators Fujitsu
Location RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science
Architecture 88,128 SPARC64 VIIIfx processors, Tofu interconnect
Power 12.6 MW
Operating system Linux[1][2]
Speed 10.51 petaflops (Rmax)
Ranking TOP500: 4th, as of November 2015[3]
RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Kobe, which houses the K computer.

The K computer – named for the Japanese word "kei" (京?), meaning 10 quadrillion (1016)[4][Note 1] – is a supercomputer manufactured by Fujitsu, currently installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science campus in Kobe, Japan.[4][5][6] The K computer is based on a distributed memory architecture with over 80,000 computer nodes.[7] It is used for a variety of applications, including climate research, disaster prevention and medical research.[6] The K computer's operating system is based on the Linux kernel, with additional drivers designed to make use of the computer's hardware.[8]

In June 2011, TOP500 ranked K the world's fastest supercomputer, with a computation speed of over 8 petaflops, and in November 2011, K became the first computer to top 10 petaflops.[9][10] It had originally been slated for completion in June 2012.[10] In June 2012, K was superseded as the world's fastest supercomputer by the American IBM Sequoia;[11] and as of November 2015,[3] K is the world's fourth-fastest computer.

Performance

On 20 June 2011, the TOP500 Project Committee announced that K had set a LINPACK record with a performance of 8.162 petaflops, making it the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time;[4][6][9] 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.[5] The TOP500 list is revised semiannually, and the rankings change frequently, indicating the speed at which computing power is increasing.[4] 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%.[10] K received top ranking in all four performance benchmarks at the 2011 HPC Challenge Awards.[12]

On 18 June 2012, the TOP500 Project Committee announced that the California-based IBM Sequoia supercomputer had replaced K as the world's fastest supercomputer, with a LINPACK performance of 16.325 petaflops. Sequoia is 55% faster than K, utilising 123% more CPU processors, but is also 150% more energy efficient.[11] As of June 2013, the world's fastest supercomputer is China's Tianhe-2, capable of a LINPACK performance of over 33 petaflops;[13] K is currently the world's fourth-fastest computer.[3]

K computer holds second place in perspective HPCG test proposed by Jack Dongarra, with 0.427 HPCG PFLOPS in June 2014.[14]

Specifications

Node architecture

As of 2013, the K computer comprises over 80,000 2.0 GHz 8-core SPARC64 VIIIfx processors contained in 864 cabinets, for a total of over 640,000 cores,[15] manufactured by Fujitsu with 45 nm CMOS technology.[16] 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.[17]

Network

The K computer uses a proprietary six-dimensional torus interconnect called Tofu, and a Tofu-optimized Message Passing Interface based on the open-source Open MPI library.[17][18][19] Users can create application programs adapted to either a one-, two-, or three-dimensional torus network.[20]

File system

The system adopts a two-level local/global file system 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 the Fujitsu Exabyte File System (FEFS), which is scalable to several hundred petabytes.[17][21]

Power consumption

Although the K computer reported the highest total power consumption of any 2011 TOP500 supercomputer (9.89 MW – the equivalent of almost 10,000 suburban homes), it is relatively efficient, achieving 824.6 GFlop/kWatt. This is 29.8% more efficient than China's NUDT TH MPP (ranked #2 in 2011), and 225.8% more efficient than Oak Ridge's Jaguar-Cray XT5-HE (ranked #3 in 2011). However, K's power efficiency still falls far short of the 2097.2 GFlops/kWatt supercomputer record set by IBM's NNSA/SC Blue Gene/Q Prototype 2. For comparison, the average power consumption of a TOP 10 system in 2011 was 4.3 MW, and the average efficiency was 463.7 GFlop/kW.[9]

According to TOP500 compiler Jack Dongarra, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee, the K computer's performance equals "one million linked desktop computers".[5] The computer's annual running costs are estimated at US$10 million.[5]

K Computer Mae rapid transit station

On 1 July 2011, Kobe's Port Island Line rapid transit system renamed one of its stations "K Computer Mae" (meaning "Station for K Computer") in honour of the supercomputer.[22]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ See Japanese numbers

References

  1. ↑ K computer, SPARC64 VIIIfs 2.0GHz, Tofu interconnect
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 November 2015 TOP500 Supercomputer Sites
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ "The K computer: Japanese next-generation supercomputer development project". IEEE Xplore. 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  8. ↑ Moroo et al. (2012) Operating System for the K computer. Fujitsu. Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 June 2011 TOP500 Supercomputer Sites
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "K computer" Achieves Goal of 10 Petaflops". Fujitsu. 2 November 2011. Retrieved 10 November. 2011.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Records
Preceded by
Tianhe-I
2.566 petaflops
 World's most powerful supercomputer
June 2011 – June 2012		 Succeeded by
IBM Sequoia
16.325 petaflops

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