during the past decade, the concepts of beowulf clusters, massively parallel processors (mpp), and distributed computing (sometimes refered to as grid computing), have become popular in the supercomputing industry. yet despite the advantages of these approaches (such as lower construction and operating costs), vector supercomputers are making a comeback. vector supercomputers, such as the cray 1 supercomputer, were the standard paradigm until the 1990s. vector supercomputers generally used a modest number of custom processors and specialized hardware to perform calculations. one of the biggest makers of vector supercomputers is cray computer, which currently produces the flagship x1 supercomputer. vector supercomputers are considerably more expensive than systems that use massive numbers of commodity components, but vector machines generally don't suffer from the latency and bandwidth issues that plague competing solutions, and which dramatically slow performance. the world's fastest computer, the nec earth simulator in japan, is a vector supercomputer. cray is confident that they can create a petaflops vector supercomputer by 2010. although beowulf systems, mpp machines, and distributed and grid computing are better for some tasks, it appears that there will always be a need for vector machines.
user comments 19 comment(s)
|??? (12:46pm est mon aug 04 2003)
does any one no how long vecter has macking computers – by jake
|vector power (12:52pm est mon aug 04 2003)
wow, and to think you can tap into that power with just a bowl of milk and a spoon every morning! just one serving and you'll be doing petaflops around the competition!
more on topic, i think we'll eventually start to see a convergence of vector and general-purpose (scalar ?) processors. just as cisc simplified and risc “complexified” to reach a more optimal middle-ground, vector and scalar processors will also try to take one some advantages of the other.
ps. that's already happening with sse, right ? – by eyad
|fingers crossed (1:06pm est mon aug 04 2003)
just imagine the day when our home pcs have that sort of power
*drool* – by azrael
|fingers crossed? (1:26pm est mon aug 04 2003)
exactly what would you use all that extra processor capcity for? faster word processing?
theres no desktop application out there which needs mor than a 486 in my opinion.
-) – by dinosaur derik
|azrael: (1:29pm est mon aug 04 2003)
you will probably never need a vector computer at your desk.
a vector machine has specialised hardware that allows an instruction (addition, for example) to act on a large number of operands at the same time. that is, they can add, like, 100 integers in pairs in one (or a few) clock cycles. that is pretty useless for web surfing, possibly useful in 3d games but invaluable in metrology and other disciplines that have vectorized data.
|re: fingers crossed? (1:34pm est mon aug 04 2003)
people always want the fastest things no matter how much they cost. why do people buy ferraris or porsches? will they ever even be allowed to go at the speeds for which these cars are built for (except for in germany of course)? nobody needs a luxury car but people buy them anyway, just as if a super computer went for sale on best buy some idiot would buy it just because its faster than anything else. its all about bragging rights. – by get real
|not sure what all the hubbub is about… (1:43pm est mon aug 04 2003)
there have always been classes of problems (especially what are sometimes known as “irregular computations”) that aren't readily partitionable into tens of thousands of smaller problems to be solved on massively parallel computers. in fact, many problems are partitionable, but so 'one-off' that it hardly is worth the triple-to-worse time that it takes to program them in an efficient parallel algorithm over an easier-to-prove linear model.
hence where the intense vector machines reside. the “ultimate” in cisc machines (arguably the first vliw's), vector processors are to general purpose computers as slide-rules are to measuring sticks. they only show their extraordinary powers when computing fantastically complex math algorithms. for ordinary “while(getchar())” processing, they're just unsuited to the task.
in a sense, intel's hyperthreading is one of the first 'crossover' technologies to give some of the advantages of vector processing (packed use of all execution units) to conventioanl von neuman architecture microprocessors. intel will continue to expand the resource pool of the processor core to allow 4-way and higher-way virtual multiprocessing from a shared cache, shared scheduler. with enough execution units, aggregate throughput ought to scale nearly 1-to-1 with the increase in virtual threads.
where this is important though is considering the same techniques and technology for what may someday be known as 'massively parallel hyperthreading', where enormous chips sporting hundreds of vector and integer resources are driven by near-terahertz schedules and decoders. yes, the chips will heat up, but it probably will be shown that they also consume the optmimum amount of power for the aggregate speed.
so where do cray's titanic vector systems fit in? well it is interesting: the cray 1 was a single threaded, super vector machine. cray 2 had a pair of tightly interlocked vector cores as i recall, and was a nightmare to program effectively. again, not from a vantage of authority, but old memories, i recall that the cray xp had 8 independent (but synchronous ĽandĽ checkpointable) cpu's.
point is, that cray research itself recognized the benefits of scaling through parallelism. the ibm's, fujitsu's of the world saw an obvious advantage in massivly parallelization, and ran with it. now, it appears that the original idea of solving problems with ultra-fast ultra-powerful “computing” cores is returning. the truth, in the end, is that it will take both to solve the really hard problems of science and mathematics.
– by goatguy
|vector processing / simd?? (3:09pm est mon aug 04 2003)
hmm… wha's th' diff' between vector-parallel processing and simd? (there is a matter of scale, b/t a p3 and a cray, granted, but still…) – by asm_amature
|asm_amature: (3:29pm est mon aug 04 2003)
a vector machine _is_ a simd machine.
another type of simd machine is a processor array machine that has a large number of synchronised cpus that each perform the same instruction on different data.
oh, and if someone wonders:
|not needing that much… (5:13pm est mon aug 04 2003)
at your desktop. remember when you 'never need more than 640 kb of ram'?
yeah, what a crock that turned out to be.
you may think that we will never need more than 133 mhz. as computers evolve, they are doing more processes at the 'same' time faster.
|needs different to wants (8:05pm est mon aug 04 2003)
don't mess with me – by bill gates
|cray… nice company, small player (1:10am est tue aug 05 2003)
i was looking at investing in cray, but was surprised to see that their 2nd quarter earnings were . the university of toronto (canada) has a faster homemade supercomputer.
cray… nice company, small player. – by chipace
|cray… nice company, small player (3:19am est tue aug 05 2003)
don't be nervous, cray catch them all, they get higher and higher with every top500 list to the nr.1 and first sustained petaflop, believe me. – by skywalker
|vector's and simd (9:44am est tue aug 05 2003)
while it is true to say that a vector processor is a machine that processes simd instructions, there is some more to it than that.
probably the most important consideration (in my opinion) is the requirement for a 1-1 memory bandwidth to gflops rating, meaning for every 64-bit number crunched, the same amount of bandwidth must be available.
so for example, the cray x1 has a bandwidth of 51.2 gb/s and a speed of 12.8 gflop/s, while the nec sx-6 has 32 gb/s and 8 gflops.
that is primarily what allows vector machines to achieve far greater efficiency than their scalar counterparts, however it costs. a 64-processor cray x1, minimum specs costs something like $8.5m – a 64-processor sgi altix costs just under $1m. you really have to need the performance to justify the cost. – by sev
|vv…childrenz…. (9:58am est tue aug 05 2003)
.vector processorz just good for the blue fairy of nvidi 3dgpu….ahhahahahahaha…….32 pipelinez with dedicated vector processorz is no laughing stock….zzz…….. – by vv…..momz…
|do i cares? (4:38pm est tue aug 05 2003)
if it won't run d00m iii
i don't give a rat's behind – by sd9if u0a8h5
|stupids (12:17am est wed aug 06 2003)
why do all the foolish 'it won't run quake' idiots even visit geek.com? you obviously have no interest in technology, no knowledge, and are not a 'geek'. you people make me sick. it's time you realized computers for what they are, tools. not gaming machines. – by greggyeggman
|stupids (1:00pm est sun nov 30 2003)
wonder where computing would be today without gamers? – by future00
|tools! (1:54pm est tue jun 22 2004)
you people are tools! all of you! – by tool-o-rama