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posted by martyb on Friday October 29 2021, @12:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the where-did-it-ever-go? dept.

Intel Targeting Zettascale (1000 Exaflops) by 2027?

'We will not rest until the periodic table is exhausted' says Intel CEO on quest to keep Moore's Law alive

[Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger] showed a chart tracking the semiconductor giant progressing along a trend line to 1 trillion transistors per device by 2030. "Today we are predicting that we will maintain or even go faster than Moore's law for the next decade,"[*] Gelsinger said.

[...] In a Q&A session after his keynote, Gelsinger revealed that achieving zettascale computing using Intel technology "in 2027 is a huge internal initiative."

Intel Aims For Zettaflops By 2027, Pushes Aurora Above 2 Exaflops

"But to me, the other thing that's really exciting in the space is our Zetta Initiative, where we have said we are going to be the first to zettascale by a wide margin," Gelsinger told The Next Platform. "And we are laying out as part of the Zetta Initiative what we have to do in the processor, in the fabric, in the interconnect, and in the memory architecture — what we have to do for the accelerators, and the software architecture to do it. So, zettascale in 2027 is a huge internal initiative that is going to bring many of our technologies together. 1,000X in five years? That's pretty phenomenal."

[...] If you built a zettaflops Aurora machine today, assuming all of the information that we have is correct, it would take 411.5X as many nodes to do the job. So, that would be somewhere around 3.7 million nodes with 7.4 million CPUs and 22.2 million GPUs burning a mind-sizzling 24.7 gigawatts. Yes, gigawatts. Clearly, we are going to need some serious Moore's Law effects in transistors and packaging.

If Intel doubled compute density every year for both its CPU and GPU components, it would still take somewhere around 116,000 nodes to do the zettaflops trick. And if it could keep the node power constant — good heavens, that is a big IF — it would still be 772 megawatts. Lowering the power and the node count while driving up performance by a factor of 411.5X on the node and system level ... tilt.

And here we were thinking the next five years were going to be boring. Apparently, we are going to witness technical advances so great they will qualify as magic. We look forward to seeing how this Zetta Initiative unfolds. You got our attention, Pat.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Says Moore's Law is Back

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger says Moore's Law is back:

Moore's Law, the gauge of steady processor progress from Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, has taken a beating in recent years. But it's making a comeback, Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said Wednesday.

"Moore's law is alive and well," Gelsinger said at the company's online Innovation Day event. "Today we are predicting that we will maintain or even go faster than Moore's law for the next decade."

[...] But miniaturization has faltered as research and manufacturing grows ever more expensive. Chip elements are reaching atomic scales and power consumption problems limit the clock speeds that keep chip processing steps marching in lockstep.

As a result, people use Moore's Law these days often to refer to progress in performance and power consumption as well as the ability to pack more transistors more densely on a chip.

Gelsinger, though, was referring to the traditional definition referring to the number of transistors on a processor -- albeit a processor that could consist of several slices of silicon built into a single package. "We expect to even bend the curve faster than a doubling every two years," he said.

Success will mean Intel just catches up to rivals, a moment Gelsinger has pledged will happen in 2024.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29 2021, @02:02PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 29 2021, @02:02PM (#1191672)

    and carry a vaporware stick?

    So Intel went from being focused and good in both tick and tock, to giving up on both, to proclaiming they will do magic in both.
    Like a big ship going nicely full ahead, then idle and reverse, now the wheelhouse calling for a full emergency speed.
    The rudder seems ok, but the throttle control loop seems bonkers. Still needs refinement to get going again.
        (Suggest verifying the internal and external feedback paths are providing a ground truth.)

    The cheerleading for making something great is an improvement over giving up.
        But only if it doesn't cause one to forget to actually make the parts and the software base that knows how to use it?

     

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday October 29 2021, @02:35PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday October 29 2021, @02:35PM (#1191690) Journal

    Zettaflops by 2027 is a big claim to make when it's already 2021 and exaflops isn't around.

    It can only mean one of three things. 1. They're going to use 3D packaging akin to 3DSoC and that will boost performance by orders of magnitude. 2. They will massage the numbers, like measuring INT4 performance. Or 3. Pat Gelsinger was doing cocaine before his presentation.

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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 29 2021, @05:19PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday October 29 2021, @05:19PM (#1191749)

      I think it means that the next level tech is sufficiently within Intel's sights that they feel it's in their interests to make this announcement and maybe gauge market feedback from the possibilities.

      If it's not a cocaine fuelled fantasy, then we probably will see a return of Moore limited progress. I have always thought that the Moore progress curve was an economically imposed ceiling: maximize profit by drawing out the upgrade cycle on a long stream of sales compelling improvements, keeping the technical progress conservative and predictable careful to not improve so quickly that the market is left wondering what to do with your overcapable new generation of top end products.

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      • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday October 29 2021, @06:29PM (1 child)

        by shrewdsheep (5215) on Friday October 29 2021, @06:29PM (#1191776)

        it's a cocaine fuelled fantasy

        I think you are spot on here. Exponential trends are not sustainable. For the first time in history, cost per transistor are rising which is another barrier to further progress.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 29 2021, @09:12PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday October 29 2021, @09:12PM (#1191821)

          Could go either way... if they've got a way to do 3D layering and keep the heat acceptable that could open a new world of density: 2 layers next year, 4 layers in 2024, 8 layers in 2026, 16 layers in 2028.

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