Intel-Powered Aurora Supercomputer Breaks The Exascale Barrier

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel-Powered Aurora Supercomputer Breaks The Exascale Barrier

Intel, HPE, and Argonne National Laboratory have announced at ISC High Performance 2024 that the Aurora Supercomputer has broken the Excascale barrier and is now the fastest AI supercomputer currently in existence...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Aurora-Supercomputer-2024

[Anux]

You should always be cautious if intel avoids mentioning power, most likely they also break the exascale in power consumption.

[coder]

For a very different (and much less congratulatory) take on this same announcement:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-powered-aurora-supercomputer-fails-to-dethrone-amd-powered-frontier-on-top500-list-again-claims-spot-as-fastest-ai-supercomputer-with-hpl-mxp-benchmark-instead

[Vistaus]

You should always be cautious if intel avoids mentioning power, most likely they also break the exascale in power consumption.

And don't forget performance will soon degrade because they find another hardware vulnerability like Spectre.

[sophisticles]

From the wiki entry:

Aurora is an Exascale supercomputer that was sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and designed by Intel and Cray for the Argonne National Laboratory. It has been the second fastest supercomputer in the world since 2023

Does anyone else see the irony of the Department of Energy "sponsoring" i.e. paying 500 million dollars for a supercomputer that uses 38.7MW?

Best part?

Under "Usage" it says:

Functions include research on nuclear fusion, low carbon technologies, subatomic particles, cancer and cosmology.It will also develop new materials that will be useful for batteries and more efficient solar cells. It is to be available to the general scientific community.

So where do they build it? Illinois!

Here's an idea, if you plan on building a monstrosity like this why not build it somewhere that gets between 20 and 24 hours of sunlight a day, so that you can power a good portion of it by the very thing you claim you want to research and also cooling will be easier because of the lower ambient temperatures of the locations that meet this criteria?

I really hate supercomputers, no matter who makes them or what hardware powers them or what OS runs them.

Such a waste of money and resources.

[schmidtbag]

Here's an idea, if you plan on building a monstrosity like this why not build it somewhere that gets between 20 and 24 hours of sunlight a day, so that you can power a good portion of it by the very thing you claim you want to research and also cooling will be easier because of the lower ambient temperatures of the locations that meet this criteria?

So basically northern Alaska for the summer months?

[3lfk1ng]

For a very different (and much less congratulatory) take on this same announcement:

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-comp...chmark-instead

Not to mention that AMD first broke the Exascale barrier exactly 2 years ago.

For comparison:
Frontier - 22.7MW power consumption
Aurora - 38.7 MW power consumption

Frontier - 9,472 CPUs
Aurora - 24,218 CPUs

Frontier - 37,888 GPUs
Aurora - 63,744 GPUs

Frontier - 1,206.00 Rmax (62.86 gigaflops/watt)
Aurora - 1,012.00 Rmax (26.15 gigaflops/watt)

Imagine consuming almost twice the power, with almost twice as many processors, and still getting less than half the performance per watt.
Efficiency remains an issue Intel desperately needs to solve.

[sophisticles]

So basically northern Alaska for the summer months?

Yes, or parts of Greenland, even the antarctic where they get 6 months of daylight in the summer and for the winter maybe diesel generators or just turn it off completely in the winter months.,

[sabian2008]

Not to mention that AMD first broke the Exascale barrier exactly 2 years ago.

For comparison:
Frontier - 22.7MW power consumption
Aurora - 38.7 MW power consumption

Frontier - 9,472 CPUs
Aurora - 24,218 CPUs

Frontier - 37,888 GPUs
Aurora - 63,744 GPUs

Frontier - 1,206.00 Rmax (62.86 gigaflops/watt)
Aurora - 1,012.00 Rmax (26.15 gigaflops/watt)

Imagine consuming almost twice the power, with almost twice as many processors, and still getting less than half the performance per watt.
Efficiency remains an issue Intel desperately needs to solve.

I was at the session were the rank was disclosed. I saw the Power column and had to open the TOP500 website and crosscheck for typos in the slide because I found it hard to believe.

But it seems to be accurate. Almost 2x the power consumption for -15% performance. What a bargain.

[energyman]

The Register has also a slighty different take on the whole thing:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/13/aurora_breaks_the_exaflop_barrier/

basically: it took them way too long. Aurora is still slower than Frontier while sucking down more energy and when Aurora is at full power El Capitan will be up and running, so Aurora will never take the No. 1 spot on the Top500.