Exascale Computing

  • What is it?
    Exascale computing represents the next stage in the advancement of supercomputing technology, when supercomputers will be able to process data at the speed of a quintillion floating point operations per second, or “exaFLOPS”. A quintillion is ten raised to the power of eighteen; that is, it’s one followed by eighteen zeroes. This is a thousand times faster than the current generation of supercomputers, which usually operate in the range of “petaFLOPS”—a quadrillion floating point operations per second. If all these numbers are hard to wrap your head around, try to think of it like this: a supercomputer that operates on the scale of petaFLOPS is already a million times faster than the fastest personal computer. Exascale computing will be a thousand times faster than that.

    Within the industry, exascale computing has become synonymous with the next goal post in the field of supercomputing or high-performance computing (HPC). Currently, there are very few exascale computers in the world. But as server and processor technology continues to make leaps and bounds, exascale computing may soon be the norm rather than the exception.

  • Why do you need it?
    It goes without saying that everything that already benefits from supercomputing will be further enhanced by exascale computing. Very briefly, we can expect to see monumental breakthroughs in these following fields:

    ● Artificial intelligence (AI): In the era of generative AI, AI models such as LLMs must be trained on incredibly large datasets, with parameters numbering in the trillions. Exascale computing will be able to process all the big data much more quickly and pave the way for new AI inventions that will change our lives.

    ● Climate change: Climate modeling and weather forecasting are key to helping humanity prepare for the effects of climate change. Exascale computing will allow researchers to run highly precise computer simulations very quickly to present actionable data that will help government agencies and affected communities negate the impact of extreme weather.

    ● Healthcare and medicine: Within the medical community, AI-empowered healthcare analytics and precision medicine can go a long way toward making sure that patients receive the medical resources they need in a timely manner. Exascale computing will give a boost to these efforts and help us lead happier and healthier lives. It can also be used in drug development to invent new formulas and simulate drug interaction to create better, safer medicine.

  • How is GIGABYTE helpful?
    GIGABYTE Technology's server solutions are widely used by enterprises and research institutes looking to push the envelope in the field of supercomputing. Many renowned institutions, such as Japan's Waseda University and Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain, have already built computing clusters with GIGABYTE servers. Scientists are using these cutting-edge supercomputing platforms to delve into climate change and healthcare-related research.

    One reason that GIGABYTE servers are able to provide such a high degree of computing prowess is because of GIGABYTE's close relationship with the industry's leading chip manufacturers, such as AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA. By outfitting the servers with the latest processors and augmenting their performance with proprietary system design and thermal management inventions, GIGABYTE can offer clients unrivalled processing speeds that will supercharge their supercomputing projects. For example, GIGABYTE's G593-series of GPU Servers are some of the most powerful AI development platforms on the market. These products combine NVIDIA's HGX™ H100 8-GPU computing module with AMD EPYC™ 9004 (in the case of G593-ZD2) or 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable (in the case of G593-SD0CPUs to create the optimal solution for working with AI. The G593-series is compatible with liquid cooling, which can further unleash the processors' computing potential while improving PUE. The G593-series can also be deployed as part of the GIGA POD, which features four of these servers installed in a single server rack to provide exascale performance for image recognition and natural language processing (NLP) workloads at scale.

    Invigorating new processing products are being added to the GIGABYTE line-up all the time. For example, AMD's Instinct™ MI300 chips are a new series of data center-class APUs that combine the functions of the CPU and GPU into one package. GIGABYTE servers that support these processors will soon be available. NVIDIA Grace Hopper™ Superchips are another type of processors that integrate the functions of CPUs and GPUs. They are available on GIGABYTE's H223-V10 and H263-V11 High Density Servers.

    Last but not least, it's worth mentioning that one of the world's top supercomputers, the Fugaku, runs on ARM processors. ARM processors can pack more cores in a single chip since it adopts the simplified RISC architecture. GIGABYTE offers a comprehensive line of ARM Servers. One shining example is the R283-P93, which runs on AmpereOne™ Family CPUs that can provide up to 192 cores in a single processor.