IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer was named the fastest supercomputer in the world Wednesday after breaking the petaflop barrier earlier this month.
(Credit: IBM)
Good news for green tech: The fastest supercomputer in the world is also one of the most energy efficient. That's according to the Top500 supercomputers list, to be released Wednesday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany.
Twice yearly, the list measures the 500 most powerful computer systems available commercially. This year, the 31st time the list has been put together, the honor of top supercomputer goes to IBM's Roadrunner, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. It's the first system to reach 1.026 petaflops (1 petaflop is equal to a quadrillion, or one thousand trillion, calculations per second).
For perspective, last year's most powerful computer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's BlueGene/L--also made by IBM--reached 208.6 teraflops. This year that computer ranked No. 2, reaching a max processing speed of 478.2 teraflops.
Fun fact: the fastest supercomputer in the world--used to monitor the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile--is really just a PlayStation 3 on steroids. Roadrunner is based on the IBM QS22 blades, which are built using advanced versions of the Cell processor in Sony's PS3. It also runs using x86 chips from Advanced Micro Devices, making it the world's first hybrid supercomputer.
In total, Roadrunner takes up 278 refrigerator-size server racks, and connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron and 12,240 Cell chips.
IBM, which continues its dominance of supercomputing, makes 210 of the 500 systems, including 5 of the top 10. Hewlett-Packard is close behind, however. HP makes 183 of the fastest computers, including the No. 8 fastest system known as EKA, located in Computational Research Laboratories' data center in Pune, India.
Rounding out the top 10 is Sun Microsystem's Ranger at No. 4, Cray's Jaguar at No. 5, SGI's Encanto at No. 7, and SGI's Altix at No. 10.
On the processor side, Intel dominates the high-end market with 75 percent of all systems on the list and 90 percent of the quad-core based systems that were ranked.
Supercomputing, which pits the highest-end machines against challenges such as forecasting the global climate in coming decades or finding oil reservoirs underground, is a fast-changing field. The Top500 list once again had the most turnover compared with the preceding list, according to the researchers who compile it.
The main measurement used in compiling the list is the Linpack measurement, which puts each system through its paces by having to solve a dense system of linear equations.
The Top500 acknowledges that Linpack isn't a complete test of system performance, but it's a way to test for performance on a similar problem across each system. The need for a more complete benchmarking system has been under discussion for several years.
Some additional interesting statistics about the June 2008 list:
* Quad-core processors are used in just over half of the systems.
* The bulk of the systems (208 of the 500) contain between 2,049 and 4,096 processors. That's more than double the systems that used that amount just six months ago.
* Four of the top five computers (Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 5) are located in U.S. Department of Energy labs.
* The U.S. continues to be home to the most computing power in the world. Just over half of the systems (257) are located in the U.S. The U.K. is next with 53, followed by Germany with 46, France with 34, Japan with 22, and China with 12.
After "not specified," the most popular application area for these superfast computers is finance (15.2 percent of the list), followed by research (10 percent), geophysics (9.8 percent), information service (6.2 percent), and service (5.2 percent).
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano announced a series of retirements and appointments among his executive staff. It continues IBM's tradition of promoting from within.
Nicholas M. Donofrio
(Credit: IBM)Nick Donofrio, executive vice president of Innovation and Technology and a 44-year veteran of Big Blue, is retiring on October 1, 2008. He will not be replaced directly, Palmisano said, but John Kelly, senior vice president of IBM Research, and Linda Sanford, senior vice president of IBM enterprise on demand transformation, will now report to the CEO.
Bill Zeitler, senior vice president and group executive of the Systems and Technology Group, will retire August 1. He spent 39 years as an IBM employee and launched the AS/400. He will be replaced by Bob Moffat, currently senior vice president of Integrated Operations and a 30-year IBMer.
In other appointments, Tim Shaughnessy, vice president and controller, will become senior vice president of Services Delivery, and Jim Kavanaugh will become IBM's Controller. Jon Iwata, senior vice president of Communications, will add marketing to his responsibilities on July 1, and Bruce Harreld, currently senior vice of IBM Marketing & Strategy, will become senior vice president of Strategy. Both will report to Palmisano. Iwata has been at IBM since 1984 and Harreld since 1995.
The data centers used by tech companies to run their Web sites and corporate networks are notorious energy hogs.
The information and communications technology sector currently accounts for about 6 percent of the nation's power consumption, up from about 2 percent to 3 percent in 2000, according to a report in February from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
In a report to Congress last August, the Environmental Protection Agency predicted that the amount of power used by U.S. data centers would more than double over the next five years, at a cost of $7.4 billion each year. The EPA also suggested that the nation could save up to $4 billion in energy costs, if it made its data centers more energy-efficient.
Those figures have led many tech giants, such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Dell, to get behind efforts to reduce power consumption in data centers. Now IBM is ramping up its business of selling power-saving technologies with new tools designed to track and cap data center energy consumption, including power for air conditioning to cool server computers, according to a report from Reuters. The products were announced at an IBM conference Wednesday in Los Angeles.
IBM is also expanding to 27 countries a program begun last year as part of its Big Green Innovations that lets companies earn and trade certificates awarded for verified energy savings, Reuters reported.
"Energy efficiency has become a critical business metric, like product reliability and customer satisfaction," William Zeitler, head of IBM's systems and technology group, told Reuters. "This is a critically important problem in the industry."
Certainly, Big Blue is landing a lot of the Big Green by helping other companies go green.
The initiative has generated nearly $200 million of technology services contract signings in the first quarter and about $300 million in the fourth, Reuters quoted Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge as saying during recent earnings presentations.
IBM blew past first-quarter earnings estimates Wednesday, posting earnings of $1.65 per share.
Wall Street had expected Big Blue to post earnings of $1.45 a share on revenue of $23.7 billion for the quarter, according to Thomson Financial. Instead, IBM posted an 11 percent increase in first quarter revenue to $24.5 billion, compared with the same period last year.
IBM, cited strong performances in its Global Technology Services unit, which posted a 17 percent increase in revenue to $9.7 billion, as well as double-digit growth with its Global Business Services, also up 17 percent to $4.9 billion.
Software revenue also jumped, rising 14 percent to $4.8 billion in the quarter. Driving that growth was a double-digit rise in IBM's middleware products WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus, and Rational software.
"IBM had a very good quarter and a good start in 2008," Samuel Palmisano, IBM chief executive, said in a statement. "Our performance is a tribute to the way we have repositioned our company over the past several years, as well as the hard work of IBMers across the globe."
And, perhaps more importantly, Palmisano said: "We feel good about the rest of the year."
Indeed. IBM raised its guidance to $8.50 a share, according to a report on MarketWatch.
Previously, Wall Street has been forecasting IBM to earn $8.25 per share for the year on revenue of $104.8 billion.
Shares of IBM rose about 3 percent, or $3.53, to $124 in after-hours trading. Big Blue, which reported its financial results after the markets closed, ended the regular trading day at $120.47, up about 3 percent.
Chips in 2009 will run faster but not necessarily hotter. That's the gist of what IBM, along with its joint development partners such as Samsung Electronics and Toshiba, announced Monday.
IBM-fabricated 32nm SRAM chip
(Credit: IBM)The IBM alliance is using "high-k/metal gate" technology to achieve this, the same category of process technology that Intel currently uses in its 45-nanometer processors. The alliance says it is seeing performance improvements of up to 35 percent over 45nm technology at the same "operating voltage" or power levels.
This allows alliance chipmakers such as Samsung, Toshiba, and Freescale Semiconductor (formerly an arm of Motorola) to build more powerful chips that don't necessarily generate more heat. This is a necessary advancement for small devices such as cell phones, as well as data centers that use a large number of servers. The power reduction compared to 45nm technology can range as high as 30 percent to 50 percent, depending on the operating voltage, according to IBM.
The announcement serves as more of a progress update than a breakthrough achievement. At the beginning of last year, IBM announced technology to "speed the implementation of...high-k/metal gate in next-generation 32-nanometer computer chips."
A gate is a basic building block of a digital circuit, while high-k/metal is the material used. Intel, for example, used a high-k material called hafnium to replace the transistor's silicon dioxide gate dielectric for its 45nm processors. As transistors shrink, leakage current can increase. For chipmakers, it is crucial to minimize leakage. This is where high-k/metal gates come into play.
The technology will be available to alliance partners in the second half of 2009, though the design process for devices that use this technology can start now, IBM said. AMD was not included as part of the alliance because technically, it is a member only of a separate alliance, SOI (Silicon-On-Insulator).
Proximity communication--an interconnect technology being devised by Sun Microsystems that lets two devices swap data just by being near each other--isn't ready for commercial release, but the company is showing off samples.
At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas this week, David Douglas of Sun Labs showed off silicon that embodies the concept. Here is a link to a video on his talk on ZDNet. Douglas is holding the chips, which he didn't demonstrate in action.
In proximity communication, two capacitors sit near each other. When data is sent to capacitor one, it gets charged. The charge then transfers to the second, nearby capacitor. The signal then gets amplified. "And the data kind of goes on its merry way," he said.
Conceivably, proximity communication, and similar projects taking place at IBM and other companies, could both increase the speed and volume of data transfer between chips. It also might cut costs. A chip might have 5,000 internal connecting wires and 2,000 solder balls on the outside of its package, Douglas said. This could be eliminated. Computer designers could also get rid of dedicated silicon for swapping data.
Making sure that data doesn't get corrupted while getting wirelessly swapped in the high-temperature, high-speed environment that is the inside of a server, however, remains a challenge. Conceptually similar concepts include "through-silicon vias," which are tiny wires between chips. TSVs aren't wireless, but they do eliminate much of the bulk of packaging. Intel and IBM are both working on this technology.
It is not an overnight project. Sun first started talking about (but not yet showing chips for) proximity communication in 2004. The technology was part of a supercomputer bid for DARPA. The original goal was to come out with the computer in 2010. DARPA subsequently narrowed down the project, and Sun was no longer a participant.
IBM's latest supercomputer is hooked up to the watercooler.
Big Blue has come out with a new version of its high-end supercomputer, the Power 575, which can provide five times the performance of its predecessor on 40 percent of the power. A fully stocked Power 575 rack contains 448 processing cores.
An IBM technician inserts the copper piping.
(Credit: IBM)A substantial part of the decrease in power consumption is due to a water cooling system that brings in chilled water from the outside, runs it through copper plates located above individual processors to absorb heat, and then draws the water out so it can expel the heat outside of the computer.
By getting rid of heat in this manner, the air conditioning requirements are greatly reduced for the "hydro cluster" 575. Air conditioning can account for roughly half of the power consumed by data centers. Conversely, instead of cutting electricity consumption, IBM, or one of its customers, could squeeze in more computing power into the same room and keep the air conditioning constant.
Computer makers have employed liquid cooling in various ways over the decades. Many liquids, and particularly water, can hold far more heat than air. Similarly, architects and building owners are experimenting more with liquid cooling and heating systems as energy prices rise.
"Water is about 4,000 times as efficient as air to cool a system," said Ross Mauri, general manager of Power systems at IBM.
The effectiveness of a water cooling system, however, depends largely on two parameters: how close you can get the fluid to the hot component and how cool you can get the liquid. In general, the closer the fluid to the chip and cooler the initial temperature, the better it works.
IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others have created blade server racks with integrated chilled water tubes. Chilled water circulates through the pipes but can't get as close to the hottest components.
The company has also created liquid cooling systems that fit inside computers and sit directly above hot components. These systems, however, have consisted of self-contained liquid vessels. The fluid heats up, rises, and then sinks again, but it stays moderately warm.
With the hydro cluster, "there is always chilled water in the system," Mauri said.
IBM isn't alone in its pursuit of brining liquid close to the chip. In February, the Tyndall Institute, a government-funded lab and incubator in Ireland, showed us an silicon impeller that can bring cooled liquids in close contact with chips. The impeller measures a few millimeters across.
The computer, along with a new Power 595 Unix server, sports a 5GHz chip, a speed bump over the existing 4.7GHz versions that have been on the market.
Unix and RISC servers, IBM wants you to know, aren't dead. In 2007, industrywide Unix server revenue grew 1 percent, Mauri said, the first time the market has grown in six years.
IBM also has been aggressively taking share from competitors Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, he added. In five years, IBM has gained 11 percent in market share, according to IDC numbers cited by Mauri, while HP and Sun have lost share.
IBM and the U.S. government are back in business.
The company announced Friday that a temporary suspension order, which had banned IBM from participating in new federal government contracts, has been lifted.
But while the ban, which lasted nine days, has been removed, Big Blue is still busy cooperating with the Environmental Protection Agency with the investigation that had triggered the broad suspension. The environmental agency is examining possible violations of its procurement process over IBM's bid for EPA business.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia is also investigating the issue.
For Big Blue, removing the ban will bring a few more bucks its way. Last year, IBM generated nearly $1.43 billion from federal government contracts. That represented a 1.4 percent slice of its overall revenues of $98.8 billion last year.
Shares of IBM were down a hair in early morning trading to $115.80, down 19 cents.
IBM, a fan of many open-source projects, has taken a minority stake in EnterpriseDB, an open-source database that competes with Oracle and MySQL.
On Tuesday, EnterpriseDB is scheduled to announce a $10 million round of funding, with IBM taking a minority stake in the company. Existing investors Charles River Ventures, Fidelity Ventures, and Valhalla Partners led the round.
The money will be used to ramp up the company's product development and sales, according to EnterpriseDB CEO Andy Astor. Altogether, the 4-year-old company has raised $37.5 million.
EnterpriseDB makes a version of open-source database PostgreSQL that is compatible with Oracle's flagship database. The company sells it as a cheaper yet still industrial-strength alternative to Oracle and as a more robust offering than MySQL, a popular open-source database. Sun Microsystems bought MySQL for $1 billion earlier this year.
The funding highlights the viability of open-source databases in business--EnterpriseDB now has more than 200 customers and anticipates being profitable within a year, Astor said.
IBM's investment, which is somewhat unusual, signals where it sees competitive pressure.
Faced with open-source competitors to its own DB2 database, IBM in 2006 introduced a free, low-and version of DB2, although it does not publish the code publicly. Among closed-source incumbents, Oracle remains the database market leader.
IBM invested $50 million in Novell in 2003 and has made clear that it wants more than one provider of Linux support to businesses. Big Blue has bought dozens of software companies but nearly all, except open-source application server company Gluecode, are closed-source commercial companies.
Also on Tuesday, EnterpriseDB is expected to announce refreshes to its product lines, an announcement timed with the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.
The newly named Postgres Plus is the open-source edition of the company's product which now includes a module specifically tuned for business intelligence applications.
The high-and commercial version, called Postgres Plus Advanced Server, is now on the same code base, which means people can more easily upgrade from Postgres Plus, Astor said.
He said that the main difference between the two versions is the Oracle compatibility included in Postgres Plus Advanced Server.
IBM has devised an optical switch that it says could one day allow processor cores to exchange large files rapidly, the company plans to announce Monday.
The component, which is still in the experimental stage, is the latest piece of technology in the field of optoelecronics. Currently, signals inside chips gets passed on electrons running on microscopic wires. Compared with photons (particles of light), electrons are slow, and they generate heat. In optoelectronics, researchers hope to take technology from fiber-optic communication and shrink it to the chip level. Ideally, these miniaturized components can be produced inexpensively on silicon, increase computing performance, and reduce power consumption. IBM estimates that a chip connected with optical technology rather than wires would use a tenth of the power and 100 times more data could be shuttled between the cores per second than with today's chips.
The switch essentially directs data traffic between cores. The component can handle multiple wavelengths of light and has a potential aggregate bandwidth of one terabit per second, far more than what conventional input-output communication systems between chips can do today. Greater bandwidth would reduce latency between cores. It is also small enough to fit inside computers: 2,000 of them could fit into a square millimeter.
IBM also ran tests in harsh, high-temperature environments that simulate the inside of a functioning computer and it continued to work.
A number of companies--IBM, Intel, and start-ups like Primarion--have been experimenting with silicon lasers, waveguides, and other components for making optoelectronics a reality for about eight years. One of the coolest is a device that IBM came up with to slow down light to make it easier to encode with data. These components, however, won't show up in computers for at least a few more years.
