The big giants AMD and NVidia will use their extreme technology fields to form a supercomputer “Perlmutter” with matching neural functions of a human brain. There are times when opposites come together, and in the recent past, it’s something we see in the computer world. Intel and AMD have recently teamed up to develop a processor with an integrated graphics processor, and now it’s time for AMD and Nvidia to do the same. And this time the target is to create a supercomputer with large-scale computing power for research.
While the details of the CPU of the EPYC class selected for the final implementation of Perlmutter have not been disclosed, AMD has described it as an “EPYC CPU with many future generation points”. Therefore, it seems likely that this is a new architecture manufactured with 7 nm TSMC, possibly the Zen 2 architecture or its successor Milan.
The NERTSC, or National Center for Scientific Computing Energy Research in the United States will soon have this supercomputer from the joint venture of Nvidia and AMD. This is Perlmutter, a supercomputer that will use an architecture called Shasta and will be the work of the Cray fabrication, that specializes in this type of equipment. It will be the first exascale supercomputer taking advantage of Nvidia’s great advances in artificial intelligence along with AMD’s EPYC processors.
Although Perlmutter will be compatible with virtually all processors (Intel, AMD, and even ARM) as well as Nvidia and AMD graphics, Cray has chosen Nvidia’s Tesla cards to perform extensive work in the field of artificial intelligence. Nvidia has proven its commitment to this field until 2018 and proves that its Tesla workstations are very useful for AI research and development.
AMD Zen 2 or Milan may be used in Perlmutter
“We are proud to have AMD EPYC as a key component for the next generation Perlmutter supercomputer. This is an important milestone for AMD and the industry as we work together to push the boundaries of hardware and software performance in the interest of next-generation research. I thank Cray for including AMD at the beginning of the review process and NERSC for including AMD EPYC in their final selection.”
In addition to the Tesla cards, Cray will opt for AMD’s EPYC processors due to its 7-nanometer production. The function of this supercomputer (i.e. it can operate one exaflop per second) will be varied, including the study of different elements of nuclear fusion, molecular biology, and vaccine development.
When we started talking about the computing power of an exaflop, it was also said that it would be crucial for the Human Brain Project, as it is estimated that this would be the neural processing capacity of a human brain. It is not yet known how many Tesla graphics or Epyc processors will be present in Perlmutter, but it will perform the first operations during 2021.