Supercomputers have come a long way since its inception in 1929. Nowadays, even an average computer packs processing power in the region of 3 to 6.5 teraflops. Compared to a few kiloflops in the very first ‘supercomputers’, this is a huge leap.
This makes Nvidia’s new supercomputer even more impressive. The DGX SaturnV--also known as “the world’s first AI supercomputer in a box”--has broken into the market and shattered TOP 500’s list of most powerful computers. The machine is currently recognised as the world's most energy-efficient supercomputer. Armed with a staggering 63,488GB of RAM, 60,512 Intel Xeon E5-2698v4 CPU cores and Nvidia’s Tesla P100 graphic processing units.
Probably the most impressive aspect of the supercomputer is that it is capable of pushing 9.46 gigaflops/watt, giving it a massive increase in energy efficient of at least 42 percent over other supercomputers on the list.
The DGX SaturnV also includes Nvidia’s DGX-1s which the company claims is specifically built for deep learning and AI-accelerated analytics. The company goes on to say that the machine is equivalent to 250 conventional servers.
“Artificial intelligence is the most far-reaching technological advancement in our lifetime," said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA.
"It changes every industry, every company, everything. It will open up markets to benefit everyone. Data scientists and AI researchers today spend far too much time on home-brewed high-performance computing solutions. The DGX-1 is easy to deploy and was created for one purpose: to unlock the powers of superhuman capabilities and apply them to problems that were once unsolvable," he added.
