AMD plans to deliver a 1.5 exaflops supercomputer in 2021
AMD plans to deliver a 1.5 exaflops supercomputer in 2021
This AMD-powered Cray system will deliver more computing performance than most of the world’s top supercomputers combined, with AMD’s Joe Cowell, AMD’s PR manager for Northern Europe, stating that “AMD powered Cray supercomputer will deliver the same performance as the world’s top 160 fastest supercomputers…combined!”
To create this monstrous system, AMD will bring together “future-generation High Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) optimized, custom AMD EPYC CPU, and Radeon Instinct GPU processors”, which will be interconnected using AMD’s Infinity Fabric to enable fast data movement, coherent connectivity and faster execution times for complex calculations.Â
In terms of raw performance, there is no system today that can match what AMD has planned, with today’s top supercomputer, the IBM Summit, offering peak performance levels (Rpeak) of around 200 petaflops of computing performance. If AMD’s new system offered 1.5 exaflops of performance, that would be equivalent to 7.5 IBM Summit supercomputers at their peak output.Â
On both the CPU and graphics sides, this AMD/Cray Frontier system will utilise future generation Radeon Instinct and EPYC series processors, with AMD confirming that their Radeon Instinct GPUs will use HBM memory and be optimised for AI performance. This PC is expected to become the world’s fastest supercomputer when it is delivered, which would be an astounding achievement for AMD.Â
Alongside this system, AMD plans to deliver ORNL an enhanced version of their ROCm programming tools, which will be developed alongside Cray to tap into the insane performance levels that the combined efforts of AMD’s Radeon Instinct GPU and EPYC processors can offer.Â
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In 2021, AMD plans to bring the world onto the era of exascale computing, offering scientists to access performance levels which will enable them to create more accurate simulations and models than ever before to deepen humanity’s understanding of the world, potentially revolutionising the science of weather, sub-atomic structures, genomics, physics, and more.Â
If everything goes to plan, AMD will have successfully moved from having virtually no presence in the Supercomputing market to becoming the leader of the pack with the delivery of their 1.5 exaflops system, which is a staggering turn of events. Intel has also been tapped by the US Department of Energy to create an exascale supercomputer but at the time of writing AMD’s system appears to be more ambitious, with plans to offer 1.5 exaflops of performance, rather than Intel’s plans to offer an already impressive 1 exaflops computing power.Â
You can join the discussion on AMD’s plans to deliver a 1.5 TFLOP supercomputer by 2021 on the OC3D Forums.Â