K computer

The K computer (Japanese京, Kei, [ ke ː ], dt " 10 quadrillion, 10 Peta - " ) is a Japanese supercomputer. With a processing capacity of 10.51 petaflops (as measured by the LINPACK benchmark) he was in November 2011 as the fastest computer system in the world.

The theoretical maximum output is 10.51 petaflops. It was built by Fujitsu and is in Kobe at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science. It combines 88 128 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs (2.0 GHz) with 8 processor cores in 672 racks. As a Linux operating system will be used. The expansion of the system to be completed in November 2012 with 864 cabinets and a capacity of 11.28 petaflops.

Already in June 2011 ( 8.16 petaflops ) replaced the K computer in its first stage the Chinese Tianhe -1A (2.56 petaflops ) and then the world's most powerful supercomputers from. In June 2012, this record by about twice as fast U.S. IBM Sequoia ( 16.3 petaflops ) was broken.

6-Dimensional-Mesh/Torus-Topologie-Netzwerktechnologie ( Tofu Interconnect)

The K computer is a tremendously large system with more than 80,000 CPUs. The network, which exchanges data as eg calculation results between the CPU plays a very important role. K computer network called tofu, uses an innovative structure with the name of " 6-dimensional mesh / torus " topology. This provides many ways of communication between the adjacent processors. By carrying out the data communication between the CPUs on the shortest path and the shortest time it is ensured that the network allows the CPUs full computing power.

In order to always achieve the best performance, it is important to prevent further losses. Even when a partial failure of components occur, the effect has to be minimized. This is achieved by a configuration of alternate routes in the network between the CPUs. A mechanism for bypassing faulty CPU, causes the data transfer can be continued. The computational processing is not interrupted.

Simulation of the human brain

On August 2, 2013, the Japanese research institute Riken announced that it had carried out the largest ever simulation of the nervous system of the human brain in collaboration with the German Research Center Jülich. The virtual neural network to be simulated here was composed of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected to each other by approximately 10.4 trillion synapses. The 82,944 strong CPU computing cluster K required using 40 minutes of CPU time to simulate only about 1% of brain activity for 1 second. In order to obtain an exact mathematical model of each synapse is assigned a 24 -byte storage, resulting in a 1 petabyte memory consumption. The team leader Prof. Markus This man was found with respect to the development, in terms of the simulation of the brain as a whole on neurons level, very confident, "If peta- scale computers such as K can now represent 1% of the network structure, then [ ... ] is with Exa -scale computers securely within the next decade, the whole brain can be simulated. " As the simulation software open source project NEST was used.