Intel CTO Tells HPC Crowd to Get a Second Life

By Michael Feldman

November 17, 2009

The opening address of the Supercomputing Conference had a surreal quality to it in more ways than one. Between talking avatars, physics-simulated sound, and a Larrabee demo running HPC-type codes, it was hard to separate reality from fantasy.

On Tuesday morning, Intel CTO and HPC aficionado Justin Rattner presented his vision of the future of high performance computing to the SC09 crowd in attendance. Rattner’s thesis: the 3D Web will be the technology driver that revitalizes the HPC business model. More precisely, the combination of HPC and cloud computing will make the 3D Web possible, and, more important to Intel’s bottom line, ubiquitous. “There is nothing more important to the long-term health of the HPC industry than the 3D Web,” said Rattner.

Why does high performance computing need revitalizing? Citing HPC server revenue projections from InterSect 360, Rattner noted that the trend showed a modest compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.6 percent into the foreseeable feature. “This is not a healthy business,” he complained. Of course, 3.6 percent is pretty healthy growth for some sectors, but for high-flying Silicon Valley chip vendors, apparently not good enough.

Rattner’s answer to HPC server woes is the invention of the 3D Web, a cloud platform which encompasses real-time simulations, multi-view animation, and immersive virtual environments. The idea is that the computational horsepower needed to accomplish this requires high performance computing technology, but the application set extends far beyond traditional HPC. For example, consumer applications like advanced multiplayer online games and virtual communities could help to make the 3D Web a mainstream computing platform.

Industrial applications, like apparel design, would also be able to take advantage of these capabilities. Rattner brought on Shenlei Winkler, the CEO of the Fashion Research Institute, who noted that the $1.7 trillion apparel industry is barely computerized, relying mostly on sketches and physical sampling to design fashion products. She went on to explain how her organization uses OpenSim, an open source virtual world, to slash design time by 75 percent and sample costs by 65 percent. With a more sophisticated 3D Web capability, consumers themselves will be able to design and order clothes. What she didn’t mention was that the trillion-dollar fashion industry would most likely shrink dramatically if this level of sophistication was available to fashion designers and consumers, given that a lot of human labor would be replaced by software.

Rattner also talked with Utah State biology researcher Aaron Duffy, who has created a simulation of a fern ecosystem. The trick here was that Duffy conversed with Rattner as an avatar that was surrounded in his virtual fern forest. The platform he used was called ScienceSim, a virtual world designed as sort of a Second Life for scientists.

This is all first-generation technology. The avatars look cartoonish, and the interactions between them and their virtual environments are limited. The goal, of course, is to provide much more refined visualization and enable a lot greater complexity in these virtual worlds. At one point, Rattner demonstrated a high-res simulation of cloth draped being across a surface. Another simulation of running water included its own sound based solely on the physics of the model. The problem is that these were replays of simulations that took hours to produce on a small cluster. To get to an interactive 3D Web experience, real-time simulations are required.

While giving a nod to his company’s Nehalem chips and even the latest GPUs as evidence of how performance is forging ahead on general-purpose chips, the real point of this exercise was to show how Intel’s upcoming Larrabee processors might fit into this story. What Rattner presented was a system in which Larrabee is attached as an accelerator to act as the heavy-duty computational engine, presumably for 3D Web duty. This is essentially the same model AMD and NVIDIA are using for their GPGPUs, where the GPU and CPU converse via the PCI bus. Apparently though, Intel thinks it can do an end-around the PCI bus and have the CPU and Larrabee talk directly through a “shared virtual memory” to allow for seamless data sharing.

There’s no evidence that Intel has built such a system, but Rattner did apparently have a Larrabee chip on hand to put it through its paces. Running SGEMM, a general matrix multiply subroutine in the Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) library, Larrabee delivered about 800 gigaflops, and just over 1 teraflop when they overclocked it. Keep in mind though, SGEMM is the single precession floating point version of the general matrix multiplication routine. A more modest 8 gigaflops was delivered by Larrabee on a couple of sparse matrix codes (QCD and FEM_CANT).

Considering Larrabee was being positioned strictly for graphics/visualization apps, the scientific benchmarking demo and the whole idea of associating the technology with HPC is yet another example of Intel’s split personality when it comes to this chip. It’s possible that NVIDIA’s recent Fermi GPU rollout has caused Intel to rethink its Larrabee strategy. In any case, when the first Larrabee products are released into the wild next year, we’ll know the answer.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire