Prospectus
Transitioning Moore’s Law to the Next Generation
Supercomputers have revolutionized
science and defense in the last several decades, but additional effort will
be required to maintain the trend. Moore’s
Law has driven computers to be ever faster and progressively more capable of
simulating larger problems with more sophisticated physics, thereby solving
problems of progressively more importance to society. There is growing alarm
that the current trend of “Moore’s Law” is reaching its end.
Applications specialists in several fields foresee requirements up to 1 Zettaflops
(10 million times the speed of the currently-fastest supercomputer) to complete
just their missions. These requirements not only exceed the growth rate of
Moore’s Law, but also exceed the physical limits of computers based on
the physics currently underlying their operation. This opens a “mission
gap” between the peak performances of supercomputers based on current
trends and the mission needs of applications. There are options for filling
this gap by developing new supercomputers based on disruptive technologies,
yet the community must commit to one or a few to have sufficient resources
to develop a solution. Furthermore, new and important problems based on optimization,
inverses, and data analysis will have fundamentally larger resource requirements
than simulations, with these new problems driving even higher computing requirements.
An important new workshop is being organized to match the continuum of important
supercomputing applications with over-the-horizon computing methods fostered
by the approaching nanoscale devices and to determine the limits of practical
computing imposed by the constraints of basic physics and technology. Although
not asserting a particular target performance value, a roadmap for staging
advances coordinated with likely technology progress will be developed that
will traverse the end of the reign of transistorized microprocessors and cross
in to the domain of post-transistor nanotech devices and reversible logic at
the end of the next decade. But even beyond this, participants will consider
the factors determining the ultimate capabilities and what technologies may
enable them and the problems these supercomputers will solve.
Organization and Key Topics:
- Problems
to Solve. Identify important problems that can be solved with supercomputing
and their resource requirements.
In some cases, scaling up today’s applications
will enable solution to new and important problems. In other cases, new problems
will require new applications. Characterize the resource needs of the applications
in decadal levels (1, 10, 100 Petaflops, 1, 10, 100 Exaflops, etc…),
being mindful of the basic capabilities offered by Moore’s Law and disruptive
technologies in terms of FLOPS, memory, I/O, interconnect, and other relevant
features.
- Baseline Technologies. Identify the physical limits of supercomputer classes
in use today, such as clusters, MPPs, and other approaches, based on the principles
of physics and available roadmaps.
- Disruptive Technologies. Identify other classes of computation that may succeed
the baseline technologies based on:
- New architectures, such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), Processor
in Memory (PIM), the Vector architecture (reborn), and others.
- New devices capable of computing, such as RSFQ, CNFET, RTD, SET, Y-junctions,
Moltronics, Quantum Dots, spintronics, and other devices of which the participants
may be aware.
- New ways of using devices, such as adiabatic logic design or reversible logic.
- Programming Methods. Billions have been invested in code for supercomputers,
which is predominately composed of Fortran or C/C++ code with MPI or OpenMP
communications. Determine which disruptive technologies are incompatible with
existing code or programming methods, thereby classifying application missions
into those that can leverage the existing software investment and which cannot.
- Reconciliation and Planning. Determine the suitability of running each application
at particular scale levels with particular computing technologies, providing
a matrix matching the ability of each relevant technology to run an application.
- Nanoscale Technology directions
and alternatives
- Advanced computer architecture
and parallel execution models
- Low power technology and Reversible
logic
- Peta/Exascale applications and
algorithms
- Scalable operating and runtime
system software
- System engineering
- Programming
models and languages
- Reliability and fault tolerance
- Measuring
success: metrics and methods
Charter to Groups
To establish the first long-term roadmap for the future of high performance
computing from the near-term range of Petaflops-scale through to the asymptotic
realm of extreme computing beyond an Exaflops as determined by the capabilities
and limitations of future enabling technologies in order to identify critical
research directions for continued growth in sustained performance for future
applications and to determine the ultimate bounds on real world problems.
Organizers propose four groups of about 20 participants each in two general
groups as follows:
Application Pull |
Technology Push |
- Real world problems that
become solvable with each new generation of computer technology
|
- End of Moore’s Law
according to ITRS (SIA) roadmap
- Nano-scale technology implementations
of digital logic functions
- Extreme computing technologies
|
- Working Group 1: Applications Pull
This
group will attempt to model society’s process for committing to
develop and use new computer technology. The groups will consider progressively
more powerful and esoteric technology options. To understand society’s
motivation for supporting technology research, the group will first characterize
new problems that become soluble with an uptick in technology. Then, the challenges
of developing the technology will be assessed with a specific emphasis on the
challenges (hardware, software, science, experimentation) needed to practically
solve the problems identified. Reconciling the technology development costs
with benefit to society becomes a roadmap for selling the process.
- Working Group 2: End of ITRS
The ITRS extends semiconductor CMOS and DRAM technologies to a few tens of
nanometers with increasing uncertainty due to cost, fabrication process, and
power concerns. Using these projections at the end of the predicted technology
path, this working group will summarize the technology operational properties,
determine likely performance characteristics of both conventional and custom
architectures implemented at this technology design point, and consider one
or more challenging applications of importance that will both require and benefit
from this level of capability. Key technical issues and challenges will be
identified to achieve this level of capability and required research directions
will be specified.
- Working Group 3: Nano-scale and other Leap-frog Technologies
Nano-scale technology of the future will permit the definition, design, and
fabrication of logic devices at near atomic scale that will yield component
densities unlikely to be exceeded due to quantum limitations. Alternative technologies
like RSFQ logic exploit superconductivity to deliver unprecedented switching
rates (100s of GHz) at low power. Such innovations in asymptotic technologies
will achieve ultimate capabilities from physical devices still operating within
the domain of Boolean logic. This group will determine the level of performance
that may be achieved within this technology realm, the computational structures
and architectures that may be required and employed to exploit it, and the
applications that may be enabled by it.
- Working Group 4: Extreme
Technologies and Methods
This group will explore computers unconstrained by anything except the laws
of physics. It is known that reversible logic and quantum computing create
another performance tier while still being recognizable as computers. Of course,
participants are free to speculate on more far-fetched technologies like neural
nets and DNA computers. Since the groups will have already considered simpler
technologies in the Monday and Tuesday sessions, this session could find important
problems that can only be solved with these esoteric technologies.
Sandia
National Laboratories | Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory | Privacy
and Security
Modified on:
July 3, 2007
Contact: erikdebenedictis@sandia.gov