SC11: Nvidia chief Jen-Hsun Huang talks up 'disruptive' supercomputing

SEATTLE: The use of GPU hardware will be essential in cracking the exascale performance barrier by the end of the decade, according to the chief executive of Nvidia.

Jen-Hsu Huang used his keynote at the 2011 SuperComputing conference (SC11) to outline what he sees as an essential pairing of CPU and GPU hardware in the next generation of supercomputers.

Huang explained that, as engineers reduce the size of components, problems such as power leakage have cut the power savings of previous scaling methods. As a result, power demands continue to climb and energy efficiency has become a primary inhibitor for future systems.

"Supercomputing is now power-limited, and energy efficiency is our single greatest imperative," he said. "Efficient performance is the only way out of this nasty situation, otherwise the numbers can get very large."

Nvidia is hoping to overcome these challenges by developing platforms that exploit the multi-threading capabilities of graphics chips for use in high-performance systems.

The use of GPUs to aid general computing is not new, but Huang said Nvidia will further integrate its hardware and allow engineers even deeper access into Nvidia systems.

The company hopes that new projects such as OpenACC will pair Nvidia with traditional supercomputer players such as Cray to develop parallel processing platforms.

Huang said the joint efforts will help supercomputer facilities reach the exaflop barrier by 2019 while maintaining a 20MW power threshold. This is then expected to translate into more powerful desktop and mobile systems.

Huang predicted that a 1,000W desktop system will be able to operate at hundreds of teraflops by 2019, equal to speeds posted by the famous Blue Gene computing cluster.

In the meantime, economic and marketing challenges could pose a problem for hardware and software developers.

Huang explained that supercomputing faces an "innovator's dilemma" in which its cutting-edge components cannot be practically marketed to the general public.

"What is special about this industry is that the technology needs to be so much greater than the size of the market. As a result, we have super challenges to face," he said.