In this talk we analyze major recent trends and changes in the High Performance Computing (HPC). The introduction of vector computers started the area of 'Supercomputing'. The initial success of vector computers in the seventies was driven by raw performance. Massive Parallel Systems (MPP) became successful in the early nineties due to their better price/performance ratios, which was enabled by the attack of the 'killer-micros'. The success of microprocessor based on the shared memory concept (referred to as symmetric multiprocessors (SMP)) even for the very high-end systems, was the basis for the emerging cluster concepts in the early 2000s. Within the first half of this decade clusters have become the prevalent architecture for many HPC application areas on all ranges of performance. However, the Earth Simulator vector system demonstrated that many scientific applications could benefit greatly from other computer architectures. At the same time there is renewed broad interest in the scientific HPC community for new hardware architectures and new programming paradigms. The IBM BlueGene/L system is one early example of a shifting design focus for large-scale system. The DARPA HPCS program has the declared goal of building a Petaflops computer system by the end of the decade using novel computer architectures.
We will also look at the "Grid" to support large-scale applications. This envisaged Grid should provide transparent access to the complex combination of tools necessary for solution of applications problems - computational, networking, and storage - that can be provided through aggregation of distributed resources.In this talk we analyze major recent trends and changes in the High Performance Computing (HPC). The introduction of vector computers starte...all »In this talk we analyze major recent trends and changes in the High Performance Computing (HPC). The introduction of vector computers started the area of 'Supercomputing'. The initial success of vector computers in the seventies was driven by raw performance. Massive Parallel Systems (MPP) became successful in the early nineties due to their better price/performance ratios, which was enabled by the attack of the 'killer-micros'. The success of microprocessor based on the shared memory concept (referred to as symmetric multiprocessors (SMP)) even for the very high-end systems, was the basis for the emerging cluster concepts in the early 2000s. Within the first half of this decade clusters have become the prevalent architecture for many HPC application areas on all ranges of performance. However, the Earth Simulator vector system demonstrated that many scientific applications could benefit greatly from other computer architectures. At the same time there is renewed broad interest in the scientific HPC community for new hardware architectures and new programming paradigms. The IBM BlueGene/L system is one early example of a shifting design focus for large-scale system. The DARPA HPCS program has the declared goal of building a Petaflops computer system by the end of the decade using novel computer architectures.
We will also look at the "Grid" to support large-scale applications. This envisaged Grid should provide transparent access to the complex combination of tools necessary for solution of applications problems - computational, networking, and storage - that can be provided through aggregation of distributed resources.«
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