Can this supercomputer inspired by the brain Real-World results, or is it just a precious experiment in National Security Tech?
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- Spinnaker 2 Supercomputer works without disks or an unparalleled speed operating system
- The Sandia system uses 152 cores per chip to simulate the parallelism of the human brain
- With 138,240 Terabytes from Dram, the Spinnaker 2 fully relies on memory speed
A new computer system modeled on the architecture of the human brain has been activated at Sandia National Laboratories in the US state of New Mexico.
The Spinnaker 2 was developed by Spinncloud in Germany and not only stands out because of its neuromorphic design, but also because of the radical absence of a operating system Or internal storage.
Supported by the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the system marks a remarkable development in the attempt to use the brain -inspired machines for national security applications.
Spinnaker 2 differs from conventional supercomputers
In contrast to conventional supercomputers that depend on GPUs and centralized disk storage, the Spinnaker 2 architecture is designed to function more as the human brain, using event-driven calculation and parallel processing.
Each spinnaker 2 -chip wears 152 cores and specialized accelerators, with 48 chips per server board. One fully configured system contains a maximum of 1,440 boards, 69,120 chips and 138,240 terabytes from Dram.
These figures indicate a system that is not only large, but is also built for a completely different type of performance, a system that depends on speed in dram instead of traditional disk-based I/O.
In this design, the speed of the system is attributed to data that is fully stored in SRAM and Dram, a function that is spinncloud on it is crucial, and says: “The supercomputer is addicted to existing HPC systems and contains no ox or disks. The speed is generated by storing data in the Sram and Dram.”
Spinncloud also claims that standard parallel Ethernet ports “are sufficient for loading/storing the data”, suggesting that a minimum need for the extensive storage frameworks that are usually found in high-performance computing.
Yet the real implications remain speculative. The Spinnaker 2 system simulates between 150 and 180 million neurons, impressive, but modest compared to the estimated 100 billion neurons of the human brain.
The original Spinnaker concept was developed by Steve Furber, a key figure in ArmThe history and this latest iteration seems to be a commercial highlight of that idea.
Nevertheless, the true performance and use of the system in real-world, high-stakes applications must be demonstrated.
“The efficiency buyers of the spinnaker 2 make it particularly suitable for the demanding calculation needs of national security applications,” said Hector A. Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of Spinncloud, with the emphasis on the potential use of it in “subsequent generation of defense and then”.
Despite such statements, whether neuromorphic systems such as spinnaker 2 can fulfill their promises outside specialized contexts, an open question remains.
For the time being, Sandia’s activation of the system marks a quiet but potentially important step in the developing intersection of neuroscience and super computer.
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