IDC Posits Processor Possibilities

By Nicole Hemsoth

May 1, 2013

This week at the IDC User Forum in Tucson, a relatively small but tight-knit knot of supercomputing colleagues clustered in the air conditioning to debate the standard host of HPC topics, with the expected refreshers on big data, the various walls to scale, and domain-specific application areas (manufacturing simulations and astrophysics were two such themes).

Naturally, this was chased with plenty of coprocessor and chip chatter—a topic that seemed to generate fierce speculation and strong opinions during one-on-one conversations. To lend some perspective, we sat down with IDC HPC analyst, Steve Conway, to drill down on the differences in new approaches and how they could drive change in the coming few years as the software, programming and performance metrics continue to shake out.

Conway started with the lighter fare by pointing to a 2012 study IDC conducted for an unnamed government agency that sought to visualize what HPC systems would look like five years down the road. Using input from around 50 key ecosystem vendors, the findings detailed how x86 would almost certainly maintain its throne with heterogeneity stepping up ever closer to its side.

Those results are noteworthy, but probably don’t come as much of a surprise, especially since they mesh well with what is easy to observe through conversation and corroborated with other analyst views, including those of Intesect360 Research. However, Conway’s group just rounded out a larger multi-client study to see just how much the processor ecosystem change was affecting life at ground level—and this time, IDC was rather bowled over by the responses to some silicon-specific queries.

Every 18 months IDC checks in with user sites to take the tech investment pulse as it beats against key items. While they expected to see a jump in coprocessor and accelerator uptake, they were wholly unprepared for the overwhelming positive response to GPUs and new entrants into the market, most notably Intel’s shiny new Phi.

Conway said that while accelerator and coprocessor adoption growth was anticipated, they had no idea that it would have been over double what it was from the short time since their last survey.

He noted that while this was a striking finding, it should be balanced with the understanding that these approaches are not the majority of what sites are using since it’s still mostly CPU dominated—but this means big things for the future of companies like NVIDIA and Intel as the processor wars heat up.

On that front, it’s also worth mentioning that there were strong gains on the coprocessor and accelerator from around the industry, although he says that the public sector was the more dominant area. Still, as Conway notes, there is a wide degree of variation, even in this segment. For instance, some labs, Oak Ridge in particular, are snatching up GPUs left and right, while others of similar scale, including NCSA, have had a less enthusiastic buying spree with GPUs because they have different attributes and determined that for their needs (versus Titan’s relatively smaller user base) the payoff just wasn’t present.

The point is, says Conway, “Heterogeneity is very much on the rise. We are moving past the experimental phase, people are doing real work now.” Of Phi in particular he notes that things are moving along,  “but it’s still not clear how easy the new generation will be to program—the real thing here is that it’s going to take time to grow the software ecosystem.”

He continued, noting one primary benefit of GPUs in the wake of their striking results—GPUs have simply been around longer. Everything, including the all-important software side, is farther along, Conway reminisced about the excitement in the air when GPUs were the new kid on the HPC block, pointing to the same reaction to Intel’s push of Phi into the ecosystem.

At this point, he says, it’s all about claims—there are no real ways to determine just how simple to program Phi will actually prove to be, but the possibilities have certainly piqued the interest of more parties than IDC predicted. Further, the performance verdict is still not out in terms of actual performance, but the details are being moved out and by the next census of its kind, there will be a much stronger story to tell on both sides.

The big piece of the puzzle for the coprocessor and accelerator companies to click into place involves the larger HPC ecosystem. FLOPs are valuable as a census of sorts, says Conway, but there are new needs that are pushing us farther away from the “compute-centric” reality we’re still immersed in today.

Acceleration and pushing performance are always going to have a place, but we will need to watch these stories unfold in the larger context of how system vendors pull together to push the interconnect to new heights (another developing story for Intel with its recent acquisitions of both Cray and QLogic interconnect tech), says Conway. Users with “big data” needs are seeking less compute-centric and more data-centric approaches that emphasize the ability to ingest and analyze versus tear through Linpack results to arrive at figures that don’t reflect real application performance.

Again, he agrees that the Top 500 is of great value to the community, but the next years with their innovative memory and interconnect doors to open will start to build the foundation for more balanced HPC systems—and hopefully those with wider appeal and further fine-tuning for data movement versus raw horsepower.

It’s not easy to find analyst groups that agree on the broader level, but in this case, HPC analyst Addison Snell and his group at Intersect360 Research contend that accelerators are a top-of-the-list item to watch, even if compute-centric and data-centric advocates push their points. “Accelerator use is in the early stages but results point to continued penetration of the market.” They added to this in their own list of predictions that CPU cores will proliferate on CPUs and accelerators as users explore the limits of parallelism as processor architectures diversify.”

So with all of this in mind, take a quick look at what select folks in the community are talking about this week via the IDC User Forum Agenda. Some cool astrophysics presentations were to be had this morning—tomorrow comes an extension on this talk with a host of mini-presentations on processor and accelerator advancements.

Related Stories

FLOPS Fall Flat for Intelligence Agency

IDC: Supercomputing Spending Jumps 30 Percent

NVIDIA: 70 Leading Apps Add Support for GPU Accelerators

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!

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…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a 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…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi 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