{"id":6877,"date":"2014-11-18T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nccomputertech.com\/?p=6877"},"modified":"2014-11-18T10:00:10","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T15:00:10","slug":"intel-turns-to-light-beams-to-speed-up-supercomputers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2014\/11\/18\/intel-turns-to-light-beams-to-speed-up-supercomputers\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel turns to light beams to speed up supercomputers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Intel will start using light pulses next year to move data at blistering speeds in supercomputers, yielding potentially massive advances in high-performance computing.<\/p>\n

It will use optical cables to move data more quickly than conventional copper wiring for linking computing and storage units. That faster data movement should improve system performance overall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf all your compute nodes are connected via photonics, it does start to make application performance look different,\u201d said Charlie Wuischpard, vice president and general manager of Intel\u2019s workstations and high-performance computing division.<\/p>\n

Light pulses are already used for power-efficient and high-speed data transfers over communications networks, and are also finding a place in PCs and data centers. Intel\u2019s Thunderbolt technology uses light to connect computers to peripherals like external hard drives at around 20Gbps. Intel has also developed an optical connector called MXC that can transfer data at speeds of up to 1.6Tbps between servers.<\/p>\n

Optics will bring performance advances while reducing power consumption, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.<\/p>\n

Supercomputers have a lot of cabinets, processing, and storage units and racks, and moving signals between all the units uses more power than processing itself.<\/p>\n

Optical technology requires \u201ca lot less power to send the signal in any arbitrary distance,\u201d Brookwood said.<\/p>\n

One challenge has been building optical interfaces at a reasonable cost, but Intel has found a cost-effective way to hook up transmitters and receivers to systems, Brookwood said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSilicon photonics is technology whose time is coming,\u201d Brookwood said.<\/p>\n

intel logo<\/p>\n

For Intel, optical technology is also key in surpassing the milestone of exascale computing, in which supercomputer performance is more than 1 exaflop, or million trillion calculations per second. Intel wants to make a 1 exaflop supercomputer by 2020 to 2022 that can fit in a 20-megawatt data center. The fastest computer in the world, Tianhe-2, delivers a peak performance of 33.86 petaflops.<\/p>\n

Intel has researched silicon photonics for more than a decade. The optical connection technology will be part of Intel\u2019s Omni-Path networking platform, and will be available as an alternative to copper connections. It will be come with Intel\u2019s Knights Landing supercomputing chip, which will be in supercomputers next year. The chip has additional technology such as DDR4 DRAM and a new form of stacked HMC (Hybrid Memory Cube) memory to boost supercomputing performance.<\/p>\n

Intel didn\u2019t share more details on the protocol that will be used for optical data transfers. Wuischpard said more information will be shared at a later date. Omni-Path isn\u2019t based on Infiniband and Intel hasn\u2019t said if it would be based on ethernet or PCI-Express.<\/p>\n

Other companies are also looking at optical technology. IBM is researching optics for on-chip communication between transistors, something Intel has not demonstrated or talked about yet.<\/p>\n

via Intel turns to light beams to speed up supercomputers | PCWorld<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Intel will start using light pulses next year to move data at blistering speeds in supercomputers, yielding potentially massive advances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[529,855],"class_list":["post-6877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware","category-technology","tag-intel","tag-processors"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papNkV-1MV","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8467,"url":"https:\/\/nccomputertech.com\/techtalk\/2015\/07\/14\/china-retains-supercomputing-crown-as-u-s-representation-lingers-near-historic-lows\/","url_meta":{"origin":6877,"position":0},"title":"China retains supercomputing crown as U.S. representation lingers near historic lows","author":"NCCT","date":"July 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A supercomputer developed by China\u2019s National Defense University remains the fastest publically known computer in the world while the U.S. is close to an historic low in the latest edition of the closely followed Top 500 supercomputer ranking, which was published on Monday. 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