In addition to LINPACK, "K computer" demonstrates high performance in all four benchmarks evaluating overall supercomputer performance

TOKYO, Japan, Nov 16 -- RIKEN, the University of Tsukuba, and Fujitsu Limited today announced that they received top-ranking in all four benchmarks for the performance results of the "K computer"(1) at the 2011 HPC Challenge Awards(2). The awards were announced on November 15 (US Pacific Standard Time) at SC11, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis taking place in Seattle, USA. The first-place rankings in the HPC Challenge Awards were received in the following four benchmarks used for evaluating the all-around performance of a supercomputer: 1) Global HPL; 2) Global RandomAccess; 3) EP STREAM (Triad) per system; and 4) Global FFT.

The HPC Challenge Awards demonstrate that, in addition to achieving successive top-place rankings on the June and November 2011 editions of the TOP500 list measuring LINPACK computational speed, the K computer is evaluated very highly in all-around performance as a general-purpose supercomputer. The K computer is currently under joint development by RIKEN and Fujitsu.

RIKEN and Fujitsu have been working together to develop the K computer, with the aim of beginning shared use by November 2012, as a part of the High-Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI) initiative led by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

The HPC Challenge benchmarks are benchmark programs designed to evaluate the overall performance of supercomputers in terms of processing performance in 28 tests derived from frequently-used computational patterns in the field of scientific computation. Among these, the four challenging benchmarks are: 1) Global HPL (operating speed in solving large-scale simultaneous linear equations); 2) Global RandomAccess (random memory access performance in parallel processing); 3) EP STREAM (Triad) per system (memory access speed under multiple loads); and 4) Global FFT (total performance of Fast Fourier Transform). The HPC Challenge Class 1 Awards are awarded to the top-ranked performance on each of these four benchmarks.

The University of Tsukuba contributed extensively to increasing the computational speed for the Global FFT benchmark. As a result, the performance results of the K computer were submitted to the Class 1 award category.

The top three rankings achieved on the four benchmarks for the HPC Challenge Class 1 Awards for 2011 are as follows:

Global HPL         Performance (TFLOP/s)   System         Institution
       
        1st place                 2,118            K computer     RIKEN
        1st runner up           1,533            Cray XT5        ORNL
        2nd runner up             736            Cray XT5        UTK
        

Global RandomAccess   Performance (GUPS)   System    Institution
       
        1st place                   121            K computer     RIKEN
        1st runner up             117            IBM BG/P        LLNL
        2nd runner up            103            IBM BG/P        ANL
        

EP STREAM (Triad)
  per system           Performance (TB/s)   System         Institution
       
        1st place                   812            K computer     RIKEN
        1st runner up            398            Cray XT5         ORNL
        2nd runner up           267            IBM BG/P         LLNL
        

Global FFT         Performance (TFLOP/s)   System         Institution
       
        1st place                  34.7            K computer     RIKEN
        1st runner up            11.9            NEC SX-9       JAMSTEC
        2nd runner up           10.7            Cray XT5        ORNL

The HPC Challenge Class 1 Awards evaluate the performance of supercomputers from four different angles, and the K computer delivers world-class performance on all four benchmarks.

With the understanding that its use would be widely shared by researchers and engineers inside and outside RIKEN from the very start, the development of the K computer has proceeded with the aim of creating a supercomputer that combines superior computational performance with the versatility that enables it to run applications for a wide range of fields. The HPC Challenge results demonstrate the versatility of the K computer and the all-around high performance levels it delivers as a supercomputer.

HPC Challenge URL: http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpcc/index.html

(1) K computer: The "K computer", which is being jointly developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu, is part of the High-Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI) initiative led by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The K computer's availability for shared use is scheduled for 2012. The "K computer" is the nickname RIKEN has been using for the supercomputer of this project since July 2010. "K" comes from the Japanese Kanji character "Kei" which means ten peta or 10 to the 16th power. In its original sense, "Kei" expresses a large gateway, and it is hoped that the system will be a new gateway to computational science.

(2) HPC Challenge Awards: The HPC Challenge Awards consist of the Class 1 benchmark performance competition and the Class 2 "Most Productivity" awards for the most "elegant" implementation of computationally intensive kernels. The Class 1 awards consist of the following four benchmarks, each of which evaluates the performance of key system components (CPU computational performance, memory access performance, network transmission performance).

•  Global HPL: operating speed in solving large-scale simultaneous linear equations
•  Global RandomAccess: random memory access performance in parallel processing
•  EP STREAM (Triad) per system: memory access speed under multiple loads
•  Global FFT: total performance of Fast Fourier Transform

About RIKEN

RIKEN is Japan's flagship research institute devoted to basic and applied research. Over 2500 papers by RIKEN researchers are published every year in reputable scientific and technical journals, covering topics ranging across a broad spectrum of disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology, medical science and engineering. RIKEN's advanced research environment and strong emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration has earned itself an unparalleled reputation for scientific excellence in Japan and around the world. For more information, please see: http://www.riken.jp/ .

About Tsukuba University

The University of Tsukuba aims to establish free exchange and close relationship in both basic and applied sciences with educational and research organizations and academic communities in Japan and overseas. The university makes a contribution to the world through its educational system that seeks to make the most of students' creativity and individuality.

http://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/english/

http://www.ccs.tsukuba.ac.jp/CCS/eng/

About Fujitsu Limited

Fujitsu is a leading provider of information and communication technology (ICT)-based business solutions for the global marketplace. With approximately 170,000 employees supporting customers in over 100 countries, Fujitsu combines a worldwide corps of systems and services experts with highly reliable computing and communications products and advanced microelectronics to deliver added value to customers. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$55 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011. For more information, see www.fujitsu.com.

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Source: RIKEN