[ExI] The Trillion-Transistor Chip That Just Left a Supercomputer in the Dust

[John Grigg]

"The CS-1 was actually faster-than-real-time. As Cerebrus wrote in a blog
post
<https://www.cerebras.net/beyond-ai-for-wafer-scale-compute-setting-records-in-computational-fluid-dynamics/>,
“It can tell you what is going to happen in the future faster than the laws
of physics produce the same result.”

The researchers said the CS-1’s performance couldn’t be matched by any
number of CPUs and GPUs. And CEO and cofounder Andrew Feldman told *VentureBeat
*
<https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/17/cerebras-wafer-size-chip-is-10000-times-faster-than-a-gpu/>that
would be true “no matter how large the supercomputer is.” At a point,
scaling a supercomputer like Joule no longer produces better results in
this kind of problem. That’s why Joule’s simulation speed peaked
<https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ai-system-beats-supercomputer-at-key-scientific-simulation?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+IeeeSpectrum+(IEEE+Spectrum)>
at 16,384 cores, a fraction of its total 86,400 cores.

A comparison of the two machines
<https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201117005379/en/Cerebras-Systems-and-National-Energy-Technology-Laboratory-Set-New-Compute-Milestone>
drives the point home. Joule is the 81st fastest supercomputer
<https://www.top500.org/system/179599/> in the world, takes up dozens of
server racks, consumes up to 450 kilowatts of power, and required tens of
millions of dollars to build. The CS-1, by comparison, fits in a third of a
server rack, consumes 20 kilowatts of power, and sells for a few million
dollars.

While the task is niche (but useful) and the problem well-suited to the
CS-1, it’s still a pretty stunning result. So how’d they pull it off? It’s
all in the design."
The big little transistor chip that could...  :  )

https://singularityhub.com/2020/11/22/the-trillion-transistor-chip-that-just-left-a-supercomputer-in-the-dust/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20201123/8f4195eb/attachment.htm>