(테크로놀로지) 오바마 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터 만들어내라고 행정명령

출처: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33718311

30 July 2015

Supercomputers: Obama orders world's fastest computer 오바마 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터 만들어내라고 행정명령

By Chris BaraniukTechnology reporter

The president has asked US scientists to build the fastest supercomputer 미국 대통령은 자국 과학자들에게 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터를 만들어달라고 요청했다.

President Obama has signed an executive order calling for the US to build the world's fastest computer by 2025. 대통령 오바마는 2025년까지 미국에서 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터를 만들어달라는 요청이 담긴 행정명령에 서명을 했다.

The supercomputer would be 20 times quicker than the current leading machine, which is in China. 이 슈퍼컴퓨터는 현재 중국에 있는 것보다 20배나 빠른 것이 될 것이다.

It would be capable of making one quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second - a figure which is known as one exaflop. 이 슈퍼컴퓨터의 데이타 처리 속도는 초당 100경(10의 18승 즉 1,000,000,000,000,000,000)으로, 이 숫자는 엑사플롭(exaflop: 10¹⁸ floating-point operations per second)이라 한다.

A body called the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) will be set up to research and build the computer.

The US is seeking the new supercomputer, significantly faster than today's models, to perform complex simulations, aid scientific research and national security projects.

It is hoped the machine would help to analyse weather data for more accurate forecasts or assist in cancer diagnoses by analysing X-ray images.

A blog post on the White House website also suggests it could allow NASA scientists to model turbulence, which might enable the design of more streamlined aircraft without the need for extensive wind tunnel testing.

Such a computer would be called an exascale machine.

Bigger models

Richard Kenway at the University of Edinburgh says he thinks the plan is "spot on" in terms of strategy, bringing together both the ambition to develop new hardware and also improved analysis of big data.

He explained the computer could aid the development of personalised medicines, tailored to specific individuals.

"Today, drugs are designed for the average human and they work OK for some people but not others," he told the BBC.

"The real challenge in precision medicine is to move from designing average drugs to designing drugs for the individual because you can know their genome and their lifestyle."

There could also be benefits in long-term climate modelling, according to Mark Parsons at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC).

Currently, climate scientists attempt to model how the Earth's climate will evolve in coming years, but the accuracy of these predictions is severely limited.

The Chinese currently own the world's fastest computer. 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터는 중국에 있다

Today's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-2 in China's National Computer Centre, Guangzhou, performs at 33.86 petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second), almost twice as fast as the second-quickest machine, which is American. 현재 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터는 Guangzhou(广州)의 중국 국가 컴퓨터 센터에 있는 Tianhe(天河)-2로서, 미국에 있는 세계제2위 슈퍼컴퓨터보다 곱절이 빠른, 33.86 페타플롭스((부동(浮動) 소수점 연산(演算) 횟수의 단위; 1페타플롭은 초당 10억의 백만 배의 횟수))의 속도(초당 1000조, 10¹⁵의 연산능력)데이타를 처리한다.

For Parsons, the latest US initiative is a clear attempt to challenge the dominance of the Chinese in this field.

"The US has woken up to the fact that if it wants to remain in the race it will have to invest," he told the BBC.

£60m electricity bill 전기세만 6천만 파운드

Both Kenway and Parsons point out that the challenges of building an exascale computer are not trivial and would require years of research and development.

Chief among the obstacles, according to Parsons, is the need to make computer components much more power efficient. Even then, the electricity demands would be gargantuan. 전력소모가 엄청날 거다.

"I'd say they're targeting around 60 megawatts, I can't imagine they'll get below that," he commented. "That's at least £60m a year just on your electricity bill."

Efforts to construct an exascale computer are not entirely new.

Recently, IBM, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and the University of Groningen announced plans to build one to analyse data from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project.

SKA will be built in Australia and South Africa by the early 2020s.

** 이 기사에서 알 수 있는 내용(새로 알게 된 사실) **

1. 현재 세계최고속 슈퍼컴퓨터는 중국 광주 국가컴퓨터센터에 있다. 이름은 天河(Tianhe/티앤흐어)-2이고, 연산속도는 33.86 페타플롭스.

2. 세계2위 슈퍼컴퓨터는 미국에 있다.

3. 슈퍼컴퓨터의 문제는 엄청난 양의 전기를 소비하므로 막대한 운영경비가 소요된다는 점.

4. 미국이 2025년까지 만들려는 슈퍼컴퓨터의 속도는 페타플롭스보다 한 단계 앞선 엑사플롭스급.