IBM，petaの領域へ

軍用コンピュータが記録更新
Military Supercomputer Sets Record
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: June 9, 2008

サンフランシスコより-アメリカの軍用スパコンが，PS3のプロセッサをベースにし，
金字塔となる，秒間1.026quadrillion計算を記録した．
(1.026quadrillion=1026000000000000)

SAN FRANCISCO — An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a long-sought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.

この1億3300万ドルのスパコン，ロードランナーは，ニューメキシコ州にあり，
IBMとLos AlamosにあるLos Alamos National Laboratoryのエンジニアと科学者が考案した．
主に，貯蔵してある核兵器の管理など，軍の問題の解決に使われる．
ロードランナーは爆発時の破片のシミュレーションにも使われる予定．

The new $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner in a reference to the state bird of New Mexico, was devised and built by engineers and scientists at I.B.M. and Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in Los Alamos, N.M. It will be used principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. The Roadrunner will simulate the behavior of the weapons in the first fraction of a second during an explosion.

完全に軍のものになる前に，気候の変化などの科学の問題にも使われる．
ロードランナーの速度は，地球全体の気候を正確にテストすることも可能だ．

Before it is placed in a classified environment, it will also be used to explore scientific problems like climate change. The greater speed of the Roadrunner will make it possible for scientists to test global climate models with higher accuracy.

National Nuclear Security Administration議長のThomas P. D’Agostinoの見通しでは，
60億人全員が計算機を持ち，24時間毎日計算して46年かかる計算を，
ロードランナーは1日でやってしまうとのこと．

To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.

このマシンのチップの使い方は，一般製品や他の並列コンピュータとは違う．
このマシン構築時に科学者たちに見えてきたのは，未来の個人や携帯端末のコンピューティングだ．

The machine is an unusual blend of chips used in consumer products and advanced parallel computing technologies. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing.

アメリカの軍と科学技術組織によって実現されたpetaflopは，ハイパフォーマンスコンピューティングのゴールであり，
(1秒間に1000兆回の計算)
彼らは日本，中国，EUでも成長している．
スパコンは国家の経済競争のシンボルなのだ．

The high-performance computing goal, known as a petaflop — one thousand trillion calculations per second — has long been viewed as a crucial milestone by military, technical and scientific organizations in the United States, as well as a growing group including Japan, China and the European Union. All view supercomputing technology as a symbol of national economic competitiveness.

解を探すプログラムを1時間以下走らせれば，
(昔のコンピュータを3ヶ月動かすことに相当する)
ロードランナーのようなpetaflopマシンは，
科学，エンジニアリング，スパコン専門家の考え方を吹き飛ばしてしまうかもしれない．
研究者は対話的に答えを得たり，実行不可能な実験を仮想的に実行できる．

By running programs that find a solution in hours or even less time — compared with as long as three months on older generations of computers — petaflop machines like Roadrunner have the potential to fundamentally alter science and engineering, supercomputer experts say. Researchers can ask questions and receive answers virtually interactively and can perform experiments that would previously have been impractical.

「このマシンの4分が，いわゆるスーパーコンピューティングに相当する」と
University of TennesseeのJack Dongarraは言う．
数十年にわたり，最速のコンピュータを追求してきたコンピュータ科学者だ．

“This is equivalent to the four-minute mile of supercomputing,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee who for several decades has tracked the performance of the fastest computers.

それぞれの新しいスパコン世代は，物理的事実を正確にシミュレーションするように進んできた．
そしれソフトとハードの技術を生み出し，その技術はカスタマーやビジネスの場に広まっていった．

Each new supercomputing generation has brought scientists a step closer to faithfully simulating physical reality. It has also produced software and hardware technologies that have rapidly spilled out into the rest of the computer industry for consumer and business products.

テクノロジーは，逆の流れもある．
カスタマー主義のコンピューティングは，冷戦後の80年代後半から，
テクノロジーを多く使わない研究開発を支配してきた．

Technology is flowing in the opposite direction as well. Consumer-oriented computing began dominating research and development spending on technology shortly after the cold war ended in the late 1980s, and that trend is evident in the design of the world’s fastest computers.

ロードランナーはIBMのPS3のcellプロセッサを改良したもの12960個をベースにしている．
cellはアクセラレーター，ターボチャージャーと計算の一部を担っている．

The Roadrunner is based on a radical design that includes 12,960 chips that are an improved version of an I.B.M. Cell microprocessor, a parallel processing chip originally created for Sony’s PlayStation 3 video-game machine. The Sony chips are used as accelerators, or turbochargers, for portions of calculations.

ロードランナーは少量のAMDのOpteronも使っている．
すでに商用サーバのチップとして広く使われているものだ．

The Roadrunner also includes a smaller number of more conventional Opteron processors, made by Advanced Micro Devices, which are already widely used in corporate servers.

「ロードランナーは次の10年に何が起きるかを教えてくれる　」と言うのは，
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryのコンピュータ科学のディレクターHorst Simonだ．
「テクノロジーは家電のマーケットから，イノベーションとは最初に携帯電話が市場に出てきたことだ」

“Roadrunner tells us about what will happen in the next decade,” said Horst Simon, associate laboratory director for computer science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Technology is coming from the consumer electronics market and the innovation is happening first in terms of cellphones and embedded electronics.”

高速コンピューティングのイノベーションの流れは，
科学者たちに，複雑なシステムのハードウェアの管理，という課題を残した．

The innovations flowing from this generation of high-speed computers will most likely result from the way computer scientists manage the complexity of the system’s hardware.

約3メガワットを消費するロードランナーは，
(郊外のショッピングセンターが消費する電力に相当する)
3つのタイプのプログラミングツールが必要だ．3種類のプロセッサが使われているからだ．
プログラマは，効率的に計算するため．どうやって116640プロセッサコアの稼働率を上げるかを考える必要がある．

Roadrunner, which consumes roughly three megawatts of power, or about the power required by a large suburban shopping center, requires three separate programming tools because it has three types of processors. Programmers have to figure out how to keep all of the 116,640 processor cores in the machine occupied simultaneously in order for it to run effectively.

「我々は懐疑論者を論破したよ」と言うのは，
Los Alamos National LaboratoryのディレクターMichael R. Anastasioだ．
「これは我々に完全に新しいコンピューティングの道を示した．我々は今までに見たことのないものを見ることが出来る」

“We’ve proved some skeptics wrong,” said Michael R. Anastasio, a physicist who is director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “This gives us a window into a whole new way of computing. We can look at phenomena we have never seen before.”

プログラミングの問題の解決は重要だ．
なぜなら，あと数年で個人用PCが数十〜数百のコアを持つプロセッサを持つからだ．
産業は，この新しいコンピューティングパワーを使う技術を探している．
ある専門家はこのような協力なプロセッサが，便利になるというのに懐疑的だが．

Solving that programming problem is important because in just a few years personal computers will have microprocessor chips with dozens or even hundreds of processor cores. The industry is now hunting for new techniques for making use of the new computing power. Some experts, however, are skeptical that the most powerful supercomputers will provide useful examples.

「もし，シボレーがデイトナ500に勝ったら，シボレーマリブを運転する価値を確信出来る」と言うのは，
テキサスのRichardsonにあるConvey Computerのスパコンデザイナー兼主任科学者Steve Wallachだ．
「兵器を扱う人より，世界中のゲーマーの方が要求が多い」

“If Chevy wins the Daytona 500, they try to convince you the Chevy Malibu you’re driving will benefit from this,” said Steve Wallach, a supercomputer designer who is chief scientist of Convey Computer, a start-up firm based in Richardson, Tex.

Those who work with weapons might not have much to offer the video gamers of the world, he suggested.

多くの重役と科学者は，ロードランナーはUSのスパコンの復活の例であると見ている．

Many executives and scientists see Roadrunner as an example of the resurgence of the United States in supercomputing.

アメリカの企業は60年代始めからこの分野を独占してきた．
しかし2002年に日本の地球シミュレーターが1秒間に35兆計算を行い，世界最速のタイトルを奪った．
2年後，IBMのスパコンが再度首位を奪った．
しかし，この日本の大学が，連邦議会とブッシュ政権に高速コンピューティングに再投資させたのだ．

Although American companies had dominated the field since its inception in the 1960s, in 2002 the Japanese Earth Simulator briefly claimed the title of the world’s fastest by executing more than 35 trillion mathematical calculations per second. Two years later, a supercomputer created by I.B.M. reclaimed the speed record for the United States. The Japanese challenge, however, led Congress and the Bush administration to reinvest in high-performance computing.

「これは，我々のポジションを維持するというサインだ」と言うのは，
スパコンメーカーCrayのCEO，Peter J. Ungaroだ．
「本当の競争は，マシンの上で発見されるものに依る」

“It’s a sign that we are maintaining our position,“ said Peter J. Ungaro, chief executive of Cray, a maker of supercomputers. He noted, however, that “the real competitiveness is based on the discoveries that are based on the machines.”

petaflopの壁を破ったIBMは既に次の世代のスーパーコンピューティングを見ている．
「記録をセット出来ると言うことは，我々が次に出来る限界と，次のリーダーが誰かを知っているということだ．」と言うのは，
IBM重役副社長Nicholas M. Donofrioだ．

Having surpassed the petaflop barrier, I.B.M. is already looking toward the next generation of supercomputing. “You do these record-setting things because you know that in the end we will push on to the next generation and the one who is there first will be the leader,” said Nicholas M. Donofrio, an I.B.M. executive vice president.

petaflop超えたことは，予想されていたよりも早く，
USコンピュータ産業がパフォーマンスの上昇を維持できれば，11年後には次の位まで上昇できるであろう．
次の位はexaflop．1秒間に100京回計算をする早さだ．
続いて，zettaflop， yottaflop，xeraflopと続く．

By breaking the petaflop barrier sooner than had been generally expected, the United States’ supercomputer industry has been able to sustain a pace of continuous performance increases, improving a thousandfold in processing power in 11 years. The next thousandfold goal is the exaflop, which is a quintillion calculations per second, followed by the zettaflop, the yottaflop and the xeraflop.