Petascale computing refers to computing systems capable of performing at least 1 quadrillion (10^15) floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). These systems are often called petaflops systems and represent a significant leap from traditional supercomputers in terms of raw performance, enabling them to handle vast datasets and complex computations.

Definition

Floating point operations per second Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measur ...

(FLOPS) are one measure of

computer performance In computing, computer performance is the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system. Outside of specific contexts, computer performance is estimated in terms of accuracy, efficiency and speed of executing computer program instruction ...

. FLOPS can be recorded in different measures of precision, however the standard measure (used by the

TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...

supercomputer list) uses 64 bit (

double-precision floating-point format Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Double pre ...

) operations per second using the High Performance LINPACK (HPLinpack) benchmark. The metric typically refers to single computing systems, although can be used to measure distributed computing systems for comparison. It can be noted that there are alternative precision measures using the LINPACK benchmarks which are not part of the standard metric/definition. It has been recognized that HPLinpack may not be a good general measure of supercomputer utility in real world application, however it is the common standard for performance measurement.

History

The petaFLOPS barrier was first broken on 16 September 2007 by the

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

Folding@home Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing project aimed to help scientists develop new therapeutics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. This includes the process of protein folding and the movements ...

project. The first single petascale system, the Roadrunner, entered operation in 2008. The Roadrunner, built by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, had a sustained performance of 1.026 petaFLOPS. The

Jaguar The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large felidae, cat species and the only extant taxon, living member of the genus ''Panthera'' that is native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the biggest cat spe ...

became the second computer to break the petaFLOPS milestone, later in 2008, and reached a performance of 1.759 petaFLOPS after a 2009 update. In 2020, Fugaku became the fastest supercomputer in the world, reaching 415 petaFLOPS in June 2020. Fugaku later achieved an Rmax of 442 petaFLOPS in November of the same year. By 2022,

exascale computing Exascale computing refers to Computer system, computing systems capable of calculating at least 1018 IEEE 754 Double Precision (64-bit) operations (multiplications and/or additions) per second (exaFLOPS)"; it is a measure of supercomputer perform ...

had been reached with the development of

Frontier A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. Australia The term "frontier" was frequently used in colonial Australia in the meaning of country that borders the unknown or uncivilised, th ...

, surpassing Fugaku with an Rmax of 1.102 exaFLOPS in June 2022.

Artificial intelligence

Modern

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) systems require large amounts of computational power to train model parameters.

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

employed 25,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs to train

GPT-4 Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) is a multimodal large language model trained and created by OpenAI and the fourth in its series of GPT foundation models. It was launched on March 14, 2023, and made publicly available via the p ...

, using a total of 133 septillion floating-point operations.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , title=FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS , url=https://www.top500.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions/ , website=www.top500.org , accessdate=23 June 2020 {{cite book , editor1-last=Kogge , editor1-first=Peter , title=ExaScale Computing Study: Technology Challenges in Achieving Exascale Systems , date=1 May 2008 , publisher=United States Government , url=https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/~george/aybi199/ExascaleReport.pdf , access-date=28 September 2008

External links

Petascale computers: the next supercomputing waveNational Science Board Approves Funds for Petascale Computing SystemsMassive $208 million petascale computer gets green light
Supercomputing

Definition

History

Artificial intelligence

See also

References

External links