
Supercomputing's future: Is it CPU or GPU? - Anon84
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strategy/2010/06/16/supercomputings-future-is-it-cpu-or-gpu-40089202/
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benkant
RISC or CISC? Perhaps they'll borrow from each other enough that the
distinction won't exist.

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_corbett
the answer, from a supercomputer user/programmer/scientist's perspective (for
now) is a hybrid of the two. some portions of a parallel program are very
easily ported to the GPU, and net a huge speedup right away, others require a
complete rework from an algorithmic perspective which will take some time (in
science, this means years).

if GPUs become standard on all nodes of major supercomputers, the memory per
GPU core goes way up, and communication between GPU nodes, bypassing the CPU
entirely, is standardized, then GPUs will have a shot at becoming more of a
dominant force in supercomputing. looking forward to it!

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Tamerlin
If you look at a high enough level of abstraction, the current series of GP-
GPUs are basically a large collection of vector processors with a fast
interconnect between them -- one that mirrors the mechanism Cray used in its
supercomputing system (X-MP, Y-MP). The main difference is one of scale.

These are currently limited in scope of applications, but they are very well
suited to applications that were formerly the domain of specialized vector
supercomputers, so I think that they will be big in supercomputing even if
they don't grow in versatility. However, I think that they will, especially
with Intel getting into the biz.

Intel may not very good at building graphics processors and drivers, but Intel
is VERY good at building on-chip interconnects, small processors, and very
fast on-die caches. That ought to make for some interesting competition, since
nVidia and AMD aren't constrained by the x86 ISA, while Intel is.

