Supercomputer Defend Thyself

By Michael Feldman

June 30, 2011

The year is only half over and already seems to be particularly disaster-prone. From the devastating earthquake and tsunamis in Japan, to the multiple tornadoes events in the American Midwest, to the deadly floods in southern China, 2011 just seems to be one never-ending natural catastrophe. And supercomputers, the very machines that are relied upon to predict and mitigate these deadly events, are not escaping nature’s wrath.

This week the wildfires in New Mexico led to a shutdown of two of the largest supercomputers in the world at Los Alamos National Lab. Roadrunner, the first machine to break the petaflop barrier, and currently number 10 on the TOP500, and Cielo, a Cray XE6 that holds the number six position, were powered off this week. The fire has destroyed nearly 100,000 acres and is likely to become the New Mexico’s largest and most destructive in the state’s history.

According to a Computerworld report, the exact reason for the hardware shutdown was not provided. The supercomputers themselves are not in any direct danger from the fires. As of this writing, nothing was burning on LANL property, but the surrounding smoky air could compromise the cooling system, which would force the machines to be powered off.

Also, the lab will be closed at least until Friday, with all nonessential personnel directed to remain off-site. That in itself would make the operation of these high-maintenance supercomputers a little dicey. Lights-out supercomputing has yet to become a reality.

Meanwhile in Japan, supercomputers there are still suffering from the after effects of the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunamis in March. When power supplies were disrupted Immediately following the quake, a number of supercomputers across the country were powered off. And as we reported last week, due to the longer term shutdown of four large power plants, the Tokyo area will have to shave energy consumption by 15 percent this summer, resulting in at least on large supercomputer (the PACS-CS machine at the University of Tsukuba) to be shut off during the day.

Although catastrophic floods and fires can occur nearly anywhere, certain locations are particularly susceptible to natural disasters. It’s worth noting that the majority of the top 10 supercomputers in the world live in dangerous geographies:

 K computer: Kobe, Japan (earthquake zone)
 Tianhe-1A: China (earthquake zone)
 Jaguar: Oak Ridge, United States 
 Nebulae: Shenzhen, China (hurricane zone)
 TSUBAME 2.0: Tokyo, Japan (earthquake zone)
 Cielo: Los Alamos, United States  (wildfire danger)
 Pleiades: Moffett Field, United States (earthquake zone)
 Hopper: Berkeley, United States (earthquake zone)
 Tera-100: Bruyères-le-Châtel, France
 Roadrunner: Los Alamos, United States (wildfire danger)

In general, supercomputers tend to be pretty well protected from the direct effects of disasters. Of course, it’s possible an HPC data center could get washed away by a flood or get leveled by a tornado or earthquake, but it’s far more likely that damage to the surrounding infrastructure — power facilities, transmission lines, water systems, transportation corridors, etc. — would force the supercomputers to be shut off.

As we saw in the case of Japan, the destruction doesn’t even have to be local. Power and water are transported far and wide, and the loss of a critical power plant a thousand miles away can have serious consequences for megawatt-consuming hardware.

The fact is that supercomputers are high maintenance machines, requiring lots of electricity, water, clean air, and highly skilled personnel to keep them running. And unfortunately, the most elite machines are becoming even more high demanding as they become ever larger and more complex.

Power interruption is the biggest risk. The new top super, the K computer in Japan, draws 10 megawatts of electricity, and most of the top 30 systems are in the multi-megawatt range. The goal for future exaflop-level machines is 20 megawatts, but many people think that number will be two to ten times too low for the first such systems.

The irony, of course, is that these same machines are being employed to help predict and mitigate the effects of natural disasters. Climate modeling, weather forecasting, hurricane tracking, earthquake prediction, and disaster management/response are the bread-and-butter applications for many of these supercomputers.

The hope is that these systems will become so proficient at modeling these events that they will able to predict these natural disasters far in advance and avoid their worst effects. That will not only save their masters, but themselves as well.

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