Europe plans exascale funding above US levels
February 22, 2012
The European Commission last week said it is doubling its investment in the push for exascale computing from [Euro]630 million to [Euro]1.2 billion (or the equivalent of $1.58 billion).
The Europeans announced the plan the same week the White House released its fiscal year 2013 budget, which envisions a third year of anemic funding to develop exascale technologies.
Meanwhile, China is moving ahead with its own plans and has the financial resources and human talent to make progress in exascale computing. The Europeans may be particularly worried about China.
The Europeans, as do the Chinese, see opportunity in the push for exascale. An exascale system will be able to reach 1 quintillion (or 1 million trillion) floating point operations per second, 100 times more powerful than Japan’s K Computer, the current fastest supercomputer.
But exascale systems “pose numerous hard challenges,” said the European Commission (EC), which include 100-fold reduction in energy consumption along with development of new programming models. As Europe sees it, solving these challenges creates opportunity for Europe, China and others looking to take on U.S. HPC dominance.
In the U.S., there has been restlessness in the HPC community about the lack of a multi-year plan by the government to fund exascale research and development.
[ Computerworld ]
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Comments (6)
by Spikosauropod
“… the White House released its fiscal year 2013 budget, which envisions a third year of anemic funding to develop exascale technologies.”
This is curiously reminiscent of the cancellation of the Super Collider in Texas and the defunding of NASA. Striving for mediocrity seems to be a whole mindset.
Our nation is thinking like Casiodorus Rex in Dragonslayer. We’ve given up on trying to excel and just want to survive to the next day.
Snap out of it!
by Joe
DARPA alone has a 2.1 billion dollar budget. Between IBM, Google, Apple I am sure american money is finding it’s way into exascale computing.
by Jotto999
“But exascale systems “pose numerous hard challenges,” said the European Commission (EC), which include 100-fold reduction in energy consumption along with development of new programming models. ”
Uh, are you saying that they will be required to increase energy efficiency 100-fold, or did you mean it will result in a 100-fold INCREASE in total use due to the 100-fold up-scaling?
by Niek
Nitpick: K computer (Fujitsu) is capable of 10petaflops. To reach exaflops, therefore, a ‘mere’ 100 fold increase in power is required, not the 1000 fold increase described in the article.
by Editor
Niek: good catch (perils of late-night posting on deadline). Fixed:
The Europeans, as do the Chinese, see opportunity in the push for exascale. An exascale system will be able to reach 1 quintillion (or 1 million trillion) floating point operations per second, 100 times more powerful than Japan’s K Computer, the current fastest supercomputer.
- Amara
by gaoptimize
I wonder when this will escalate into a “AGI/Singularity” race? The power hungry will see AGI as the ultimate advantage.