IBM Bails on Blue Waters Supercomputer

By Michael Feldman

August 8, 2011

IBM has pulled the plug on Blue Waters, the 10-petaflop supercomputer that was to be delivered to National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. Originally planned to come online in 2011, the system was subsequently scheduled for a 2012 deployment. According to a joint statement issued by IBM and NCSA over the weekend, the contract was officially terminated on August 6, citing “increased financial and technical support by IBM beyond its original expectations.”

Funded by a $208 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under its Track 1 leadership program, Blue Waters was slated to be NCSA’s premier supercomputer for open science and engineering. The Power7-based system was designed to deliver 10 petaflops of peak performance and one petaflop of sustained performance for scientific applications. It was also going to be the central resource for the newly formed Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation, a collection of dozens of universities, colleges, research labs, and institutes that were going to share the machine’s leading-edge computational capabilities.

According to John Melchi, who heads the Administration Directorate at NCSA, IBM made some assumptions about the cost and complexity of the machine that just didn’t bear out. The original proposal by IBM specified a system with more than 200,000 Power7 processor cores, a petabyte of memory, and over 10 petabytes of disk storage. NCSA, though, would not comment on the specific nature of the cost and complexity issues that led IBM to terminate the work. “The bottom line is that it became financially unfeasible for them to move forward,” Melchi told HPCwire.

What is noteworthy is that IBM now seems willing to make good on its strategy to turn its supercomputer business into a profit center, even at the cost of some lost prestige. When HPCwire spoke with Herb Schultz, marketing manager for IBM’s Deep Computing unit, last year, he outlined a new business model that would apply a lot more scrutiny to how the company positioned its high-end supercomputers. “There is really no appetite in IBM anymore — with some of the leadership changes over the last few years — for revenue that has no profit with it,” he told us back in November 2010. That was more than two years after NCSA and IBM had inked the final deal on Blue Waters.

From NCSA’s perspective, the system met all of its technical requirements. In particular, they appeared confident the machine, based on Power 755 servers, would indeed be able to deliver a sustained petaflop from its 10-petaflop peak performance. The supercomputer design was such that the memory and storage were globally addressable, providing an application environment friendly to super-sized shared-memory applications. The architecture, known as PERCS (Productive, Easy-to-use, Reliable Computing System), was the result of IBM’s work under DARPA’s High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS), a program whose goal was to create economically viable multi-petaflop systems.

While the multi-petaflop requirement seems to have been met, IBM’s termination of Blue Waters calls into question whether PERCS will be able to deliver on the “economically viable” goal. There are, in fact, several other Power 755-based supercomputers in the pipeline for IBM, including ones at the University of Lugano (Switzerland), SARA (The Netherlands), and the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, but none of these approach the scale of the Blue Waters machine. IBM’s remaining leading-edge petascale deployment, the 20-petaflop Sequoia system for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is based on Blue Gene/Q technology.

The most curious aspect of the IBM pull-out is that they had already delivered three racks of Power 755 servers to NCSA. In the midst of delivery, the company made the decision not to continue, offering no explanation of what precipitated the termination. IBM spokesperson Joanna Brewer had this to say: “As we moved forward with the project, increased cost for the final design and continued changes required us to come to the decision to no longer provide the supercomputer for Blue Waters.” The three racks of servers will all be returned to IBM, and IBM will refund the $30 million already collected from the University of Illinois for the initial deployment work.

According to Melchi, the NSF has directed NCSA to “replan the project” over the next few weeks, with a goal of fielding a system by the end of 2012. Specifically, the agency has asked them to propose an alternate system and vendor that meets the project’s original goals. Although he wouldn’t say if they were leaning in any particular direction, there are not too many choices at the high-end of the supercomputing spectrum. Cray with its XE6/XK6 machines or SGI with the Altix UV are two prominent choices, with the latter having the advantage of a shared memory architecture.

Whether a new RFP will be issued is unclear, but given the aggressive timeframe for deployment, that seems unlikely. In any case, building and installing a multi-petaflop machine capable of delivering a sustained petaflop in less than 18 months is going to be quite a challenge. From Melchi’s perspective, though, it’s doable. The Illinois Petascale Computing Facility, the datacenter originally built for Blue Waters, is all ready to go, and other pieces of infrastructure are in place as well. “We believe that we’re going to be able to bring a system online that is as big or bigger than what was proposed with the Power7 technology,” he says.

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