[Beowulf] [EXTERNAL] Re: Frontier Announcement

[Lux, Jim (337K)]

On 5/7/19, 2:00 PM, "Beowulf on behalf of Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf" <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org on behalf of beowulf at beowulf.org> wrote:

    >   I think it is interesting that they are using AMD for
    > both the CPUs and GPUs
    
    I agree. That means a LOT of codes will have to be ported from CUDA to 
    whatever AMD uses. I know AMD announced their HIP interface to convert 
    CUDA code into something that will run on AMD processors, but I don't 
    know how well that works in theory. Frankly, I haven't heard anything 
    about it since it was announced at SC a few years ago.
    
    I would not be surprised if AMD pursued this bid quite agressively, 
    possibly at a significant loss, for the opportunity to prove their GPUs 
    can compete with NVIDIA and demonstrate that codes can be successfully 
    converted from CUDA to something AMD GPUs can use to demonstrate GPU 
    users don't need to be locked in to a single vendor. If so, this could 
    be a costly gamble for the DOE and AMD, but if it pays off, I imagine it 
    could change AMD's fortunes in HPC.
    
      "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday" doesn't apply just to cars.
    
    Prentice
    

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I think they're deliberately looking for architectural diversity, rather than "ease of porting from existing machine"

" CORAL-2 has a mandate to field architecturally diverse machines in a way that manages risk during a period of rapid technological evolution. “Regardless of which system or systems are being discussed, the systems residing at or planned to reside at ORNL and ANL must be diverse from one another,” notes the CORAL-2 RFP cover letter [PDF]."

https://asc.llnl.gov/coral-2-benchmarks/