March 31, 2012

By the end of the decade, exaFLOP computers are predicted to go online. Those machines will perform at least 1,000 times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers. Supercomputer performance is measured in FLOPS, an acronym for FLoating Point Operations per Second. "Exa" is a metric prefix which stands for quintillion (or a billion billion). Exascale computers will perform approximately as many operations per second as 50 million laptops. Currently, the fastest supercomputers operate at the petaFLOP level, performing in excess of one quadrillion (or a million billion) operations per second. The first computer to break through the petaFLOP barrier was IBM's Roadrunner in 2008. But its reign as the fastest computer in the world didn't last long, with the Cray Jaguar installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States becoming the quickest with a performance of 1.75 petaFLOPS in 2009. Today, the fastest computer in the world is Japan's K computer developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu, and installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science, in Kobe, Japan according to TOP500 -- a project that tracks trends in high-performance computing. It operates at over 10 petaFLOPS. The K computer contains an incredible 88,128 computer processors and is made up of 864 refrigerator-sized cabinets. It is more than four times faster than its nearest rival, China's NUDT YH MPP computer at 2.57 petaflops. Physically, exascale computing won't get any bigger, and might even get a little smaller. But the number of processors will rise substantially to anywhere between one million and 100 million. But, there are severe technology barriers. The current projections suggest that power consumption of exascale computers will be 100 megawatts. Now, power consumption of supercomputers in general is not sustainable, so it's currently impossible to build a suitable facility and have enough power. But, the United States, China, Japan, the European Union, and Russia are all investing millions of dollars in supercomputer research. SkyNet here we come.