March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 1

Crystal Ball Panel

Thomas SterlingCalifornia Institute of Technology

and

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

March 6, 2003

Presentation to the 7th Workshop on Distributed Supercomputing:

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 2

Focus Questions

What does the future hold for supercomputing?

What do we want to see?

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 3

Shape of the Crystal Ball (1)timelines

Enabling device technologies Supercomputer architectures and execution models Programming models and languages Compiler technology and runtime system responsibilities Operating systems Persistent storage, file systems, and external I/O capabilities Reliability, fault tolerance, and failure recovery Machine intelligence in machine programming and management Resources: size, cost, power, time to program, time to solution Breakthroughs in science, technology, commerce, and national

security through computational advances

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 4

Shape of the Crystal Ball (2)driver factors

Hard Factors Technology opportunities

Moore’s Law and when does it flatline Alternative or avant garde devices (e.g. RSFQ, MRAM, Spin, quantum)

Innovative concepts in computational structures and paradigms Costs of machines Costs of programming Mission requirements and level of urgency (the “counter-costs”)

Soft Factors Mainstream market pressures Legacy codes & languages Government funding

Mushy Factors Vision or lack thereof Learning curve and reticence Conservative culture Disinterest and/or lack of will

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 5

Future or Fiction

100 Mflops

1 Gflops

10 Gflops

100 Gflops

1 Tflops

10 Tflops

100 Tflops

1 Pflops

10 Pflops

100 Pflops

1 Eflops

10 Eflops

2000 2010 2020 20231995 2005 20151993

SUM

N=1

N=500

An extrapolation of the Linpack Top-500 List of supercomputers where N=1 is the fastest machine, and Sum is aggregate performance of all.

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March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 6

Panelists

Al Geist, ORNL Mike Merrill, NSA Thomas Stricker, ETH Bill Gropp, ANL Bill Camp, SNL