The Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain for a supercomputer to build Tegra 3-soc in combination with Nvidia gpu’s commitment to the computing power. The arm-based multicores need for a low energy use ensure.
With the so-called Mont Blanc project aims to BSC ultimately exascale-performance, where the total computing power is greater than the exaflop, for the hpc’s possible with an energy consumption that is fifteen to thirty times lower than that of the current generation of supercomputers.
“In most current systems take cpu’s the lion’s share of the energy consumption for their account, often forty percent or more”, says Alex Ramirez, team leader of the Mont-Blanc project. By the use of the arm quadcores from Nvidia, which, incidentally, is still a fifth extra efficient core, the efficiency in 2014 already with a factor of four to ten increased.
In 2017 would be 200 petaflop in a use of 10MW within reach, and 1 exaflops at 20MW would three years later be feasible. The Spanish project has a budget of 14 million euro, of which 8 million come from the European Commission. Various European exascale-research centres are affiliated to the exascale program, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center promises hard – and software components developed for the project.
Nvidia used the announcement to a new hardware and software development kit to prices at the beginning of next year. The package will include a Tegra 3 soc, and an unspecified gpu.