Comments on: The First Peeks At The DOE Post-Exascale Supercomputers https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/ In-depth coverage of high-end computing at large enterprises, supercomputing centers, hyperscale data centers, and public clouds. Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:26:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: Jay https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214703 Sat, 07 Oct 2023 01:52:18 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214703 It’s ironic that the drive of commodity hardware and services by the feds has gotten us to a single viable(?) source for leadership computing.

I have been around as a contractor for almost 20 years in the space. I have seen the feds squeeze every dollar out of the suppliers as well as poach talent from the contractors. Maybe we are closing in on a point where the design and integration (and risk) will have to be done by the feds and the RFPs are for the building blocks at the component level. 🙂

]]> By: HuMo https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214654 Thu, 05 Oct 2023 21:23:54 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214654 That’ll be two more reasons for TNP Experts to absolutely and definitely attend SC23 Denver (Nov.12-17), press-passes in hand, and bring us the mile-high straight dope on this cloud/HPC (not THC) up-in-smoke yin/yang situation, as a live in-person update to the “Clouded Judgements” piece (TNP’s 09/27/23):

From ORNL, Sandia, Argonne, LBNL, LLNL, NASA, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft: Integrating Cloud Infrastructure with Large Scale HPC Environments ( https://sc23.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof222&sess=sess342 )

and from LLNL, UTK, IBM, Google, and Amazon: HPC and Cloud Converged Computing: Merging Infrastructures and Communities ( https://sc23.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=pan110&sess=sess193 )

There’ll even be some discussion of “Magic Castle” (from Quebec) and “SuperCompCloud” (Hoosiers & Euros) to further round things up! 8^b

]]> By: Matt https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214648 Thu, 05 Oct 2023 17:23:21 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214648 In reply to Hoagiebot.

It’s market conditions. The national lab-style supercomputer market has not grown much in the last 40 years. The computing market has. And more recently an even bigger shift has happened. The center of mass of HPC is now AI. In fact traditional supercomputing is like a moon around a planet around the sun with AI being the sun. It’s just a different ballgame now. Who exactly do you see surviving in the market and servicing the DOE if the US government had stepped in and prevented consolidation? Pensando? Mellanox? Surely HPE bought Cray it apply its technology to larger revenue streams than Cray was chasing itself. If HPE hadn’t been allowed to buy Cray how long would HPE have continued to make bids? Regardless, one must not lose sight of the forest for the trees. The government involving itself with markets of hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars per year of revenue so that it can get better deals on its own $1 billion a year of purchases would certainly be terrible governance. Risking hamstringing the American tech sector would be far more dangerous than having a conundrum for getting cheap supercomputers. Maybe they have to pay market prices…?

]]> By: Timothy Prickett Morgan https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214644 Thu, 05 Oct 2023 12:17:30 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214644 In reply to Hoagiebot.

Could not agree more. We have one vendor that will win all the deals (HPE) and still not make any money and another vendor (Nvidia) that won’t play because it won’t make any money and another vendor that stopped playing because it can’t afford to not make money (IBM).

]]> By: Hoagiebot https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214641 Thu, 05 Oct 2023 12:03:13 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214641 I think that the U.S. Department of Energy’s current conundrum of having a hard time finding more than a one potential bidder for its next generation national lab HPC systems shows an extreme lack of strategic thinking on the part of the government’s various departments and officials over the years. When the Reagan administration came to power, they decided that their FTC/DOJ Anti-trust Division was just going to stop enforcing most anti-trust laws and be “pro-business” (keep in mind that the AT&T anti-trust case started under an earlier administration). The Clinton administration went further, and relaxed anti-trust enforcement with defense contractors. We used to have quite a few HPC-capable computer companies, high-speed interconnect companies, parallel storage companies, etc., but with such a lax regulatory environment they were allowed to start eating each other. HPE alone has within it the consumed and long-digested remnants of DEC, Cray, and SGI inside it. Heck, Intel, AMD, and nVidia have also bought out interconnect companies, FPGA companies, and more to help themselves vertically integrate. The U.S. National Lab supercomputers are crucial to keeping the U.S. on the forefront of leading the world in technological advancement. I frustrates me that no one at the FTC/DOJ Anti-Trust Division was apparently keeping an eye on all of these mergers and acquisitions over the years to make sure that we still had plenty of independent entities left for guaranteed healthy competition, multiple bidders for every contract, and second-sources of parts and technology if need be. While HPE has made some incredible HPC systems, it’s too dangerous to leave all of the nation’s eggs in one corporation’s basket. For competition and innovation’s sake, the market should have never been allowed to become this consolidated in the first place.

]]> By: Slim Jim https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214589 Wed, 04 Oct 2023 15:57:13 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214589 In reply to emerth.

Right on! AMD should definitely make sure that it doesn’t completely lose the plot on the youthful enthusiasm and energy generated by consumer GPUs for gaming (even as it meditates over enhanced HPC/AI archs). NVIDIA’s highly productive PhDs were very likely these same gaming kids just a couple of years back, and the many folks who code in Cuda today likely got their (minimum risk) start on “inexpensive” laptop and desktop cards, and now keep using that tech by familiarity of habit.

Kids are the future, gotta get them hooked early, and often (to tech; not drugs!)!

]]> By: emerth https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214575 Wed, 04 Oct 2023 09:23:01 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214575 In reply to Paul Berry.

The networking techs and the storage techs/topologies used in a supercomputer are different from those used in clouds. Clouds are more focused on composability and general purpose applicability whereas supercomputers are more focused on raw performance on a relatively small basket of applications. This is why it is risky to ask a cloud builder to build your super. The cloud builders should show they know how to do it on some contracts smaller than the next round of national supercomputers.

Buying power, IDK that that even makes sense. When the national labs commission new supers part of what they are doing is industrial policy. Intel latest round of XEON CPUs and AMD latest round of GPUs+ROCm – paid for in large part by supercomputer contracts. Hell, AMD doesn’t really pay attention to GPU comoute for the SME market because it’s customer was the Frontier contract.

]]> By: Timothy Prickett Morgan https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214554 Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:34:47 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214554 In reply to Paul Berry.

A very good point, Paul. But the margins on these machines are nil. Look at SGI, Cray and HPE’s HPC & AI numbers. The revenue is there, but over the long term of a decade, you show me even a few percent of revenue as profit.

Nvidia showed no interest the last several times I talked to Jensen.

]]> By: Paul Berry https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214547 Tue, 03 Oct 2023 16:19:17 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214547 In reply to emerth.

The compelling things that the cloud vendors offer are
1) their buying power – about the only thing big enough to get nvidia to come down on price a little bit
2) their efficiency of operations – the compute engine isn’t going to be any better, but they may be able to drive down the labor costs of running the thing (though will likely demand it back in margin)
3) Any custom AI innovations they were planning on investing in anyway.

]]> By: Matt https://www.nextplatform.com/2023/10/02/the-first-peeks-at-the-doe-post-exascale-supercomputers/#comment-214546 Tue, 03 Oct 2023 16:16:12 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=143079#comment-214546 Government is a funny thing, huh? A market analysis would suggest that in cases where the government is a big customer they should get their goods and services with low margins and where they are a small customer they should expect to pay more. But the reality is the opposite. They dole out trillions to defense and pharmaceutical companies who make massive margins on revenue that is significant – even majority – of the companies’ totals and want at-cost service on expenditures 1/1000th the size that are a miniscule part of their suppliers’ revenue. Just have to wonder what it takes to make the gears run backwards that way. Couldn’t have something to do with a little bit of those trillions of dollars leaking out in particular directions here and there, could it?

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