The Supercomputing Arms Race and its Impact on the Everyday

Date:     Wednesday 19 Oct 2011
Time:     18:30 – Tea 6:00pm for 6:30 start
Speaker:     Steve Jarvis – Professor of Computer Science www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/Stephen_Jarvis
Location:     Computer Science Block, Warwick University

Abstract:

In this talk Steve played an interesting, animated, video on the impacts of High Performance Computing, and then spoke of how architectural innovations in this space have and will impact on computing in general. Did you know that in the ’80s Seymour Cray produced a leading edge SuperComputer … and that the equivalent power is now availalbe in an iPad?
Some of Steve’s work was featured in HPC Wire recently, see http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2010-11-04/should_i_buy_gpgpus_or_blue_gene.html

This interesting topic area is currently dominated by the supercomputing arms-race between the US and China. N.B. in November the new Supercomputing Top 500 will be announced and there are some spectacular machines likely to feature. As to who will be top (US or China) Steve didn’t know; but had some fun speculating.

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