In this special guest post, Axel Huebl looks at the TOP500 and HPCG with an eye on power efficiency trends to watch on the road to Exascale.

Axel Huebl

SC18 is in the books now and the latest TOP500 results are out. Perfect time for some play with numbers!

This post will focus one efficiency, in terms of performance per Watt, simply because system power envelope is a major constrain for upcoming Exascale systems. With the great numbers from TOP500, we try to extend theoretical estimates from theoretical Flop/Ws of individual compute hardware to system scale.

Of course, we do have the Green 500, but let us compare something different this time…

HPCG

Since recently, an additional benchmark complementing raw LINPACK performance (TOP500 metric) on systems was introduced called HPCG. The High Performance Conjugate Gradients benchmark project computes a conjugate gradient (CG) method which is contrary to the dense matrix operations in LINPACK a sparse task.

Why would this be interesting? Besides the official list of reasons on the project page and the use of the method itself for e.g. solving long-range potentials, CG is a good measure for many kinds of finite stencil-based codes such as fluid solvers, FDTD solvers, finite element solvers and the like.

CG is, contrary to LINPACK, quickly memory bound and reasonably communication intensive at scale, just like most real-world science problems. That means for a system benchmark, well-designed networking and per-node performance (fat nodes) get a bigger role in order to push down latencies.

Last but not least, as far as I am aware, CG does not benefit from the recently introduced tensor coresin Nvidia’s Volta generation. (Simply because those cores are also made for dense matrix-matrix operations and packing overhead and reduction of parallelism in blocks does not play well when also calculating a lot of zeros.) LINPACK, or to be more precise the multi-node implementation HPL, does not use tensor cores yet either, but research is done in that field.

So all-in-all, HPCG as the Flop/s measure for an energy comparison seems to be an exciting and somewhat fair starting point to look at.

Method for an (Unofficial) “Green HPCG”

So let us take the official HPCG list and calculate a “Green HPCG” from it. Why should LINPACK be the only metric for Flop/s and efficiency? This “unofficial” list is just like the official Green500 list, but swapping LINPACK Flop/s for HPCG Flop/s.

Of course, data was not complete: not all HPCG (and even TOP500) candidates submit power and not all Green 500 listings have a HPCG submission.

And the Winner is …

MareNostrum P9 CTE with 327 MFlop/Ws! A system at rank 411 in the TOP500! Positioned slightly before AI Bridging Cloud (309 MFlop/Ws) and Summit (299 MFlop/Ws).

Sierra is on place four with 241 MFlop/Ws – interesting difference for a Summit-twin.

The list goes on with recent GPU systems until Xeon Phi (MIC) kicks in at 142 MFlop/Ws for Oakforest-PACS and the best x86 system, BSC with MareNostrum again (!), with 75 MFlop/Ws.

HPCG Rank LINPACK Rank System GFlop/Ws Arch Launch
54 411 MareNostrum P9 CTE- IBM Power System AC922 IBM… 0.326807 GPU 06/2018
5 7 AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure (ABCI)- PRIME… 0.308534 GPU 06/2018
1 1 Summit- IBM Power System AC922 IBM POWER9 22C … 0.299065 GPU 06/2018
2 2 Sierra- IBM Power System S922LC IBM POWER9 22C… 0.241418 GPU 06/2018
16 22 TSUBAME3,0- SGI ICE XA IP139-SXM2 Xeon E5-2680… 0.238133 GPU 06/2017
6 5 Piz Daint- Cray XC50 Xeon E5-2690v3 12C 2,6GHz… 0.208444 GPU 11/2016
14 15 HPC4- Proliant DL380 Gen10 Xeon Platinum 8160 … 0.205962 GPU 06/2018
35 51 DGX Saturn V- NVIDIA DGX-1 Xeon E5-2698v4 20C … 0.192904 GPU 11/2016
9 14 Oakforest-PACS- PRIMERGY CX1640 M1 Intel Xeon … 0.141788 MIC 11/2016
48 243 JOLIOT-CURIE KNL- Bull Sequana X1000 Intel Xeo… 0.114417 MIC 06/2018
11 16 Tera-1000-2- Bull Sequana X1000 Intel Xeon Phi… 0.105022 MIC 06/2018
10 12 Cori- Cray XC40 Intel Xeon Phi 7250 68C 1,4GHz… 0.090236 MIC 11/2016
21 25 MareNostrum- Lenovo SD530 Xeon Platinum 8160 2… 0.074902 x86 06/2017
49 91 ATERUI II – Cray XC50 Xeon Gold 6148 20C 2,4GH… 0.073892 x86 06/2018
4 6 Trinity- Cray XC40 Xeon E5-2698v3 16C 2,3GHz I… 0.072066 MIC 11/2017
23 56 SORA-MA- Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX100 SPARC64 XIfx 3… 0.066667 SPARC64 06/2015
24 33 Electra- HPE SGI 8600/SGI ICE-X E5-2680V4/ Xeo… 0.063201 x86 11/2018
26 63 Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX100 SPARC64 XIfx 32C 2,2GHz… 0.062594 SPARC64 11/2015
31 84 Plasma Simulator- Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX100 SPARC… 0.058843 SPARC64 06/2015
41 40 JOLIOT-CURIE SKL- Bull Sequana X1000 Xeon Plat… 0.057448 x86 06/2018
57 361 Falcon- SGI ICE X Xeon E5-2695v4 18C 2,1GHz In… 0.055593 x86 11/2017
32 69 TSUBAME 2,5- Cluster Platform SL390s G7 Xeon X… 0.051859 GPU 06/2014
34 44 JURECA- T-Platforms V-Class/Dell C6320P E5-268… 0.050800 GPU 11/2017
25 36 Cheyenne- SGI ICE XA Xeon E5-2697v4 18C 2,3GHz… 0.050539 x86 11/2016
46 131 Prometheus- HP Apollo 8000 Xeon E5-2680v3 12C … 0.049455 GPU 11/2015
40 253 iDataPlex DX360M4 Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 10C 2,8… 0.048786 x86 11/2013
3 18 K computer SPARC64 VIIIfx 2,0GHz Tofu intercon… 0.047610 SPARC64 11/2011
55 246 Cobalt- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2680v4 14C 2,4GH… 0.043080 x86 06/2016
50 90 Beaufix2- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2698v4 20C 2,2… 0.042580 x86 11/2016
51 89 Prolix2- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2698v4 20C 2,2G… 0.042570 x86 06/2016
18 21 Mira- BlueGene/Q Power BQC 16C 1,60GHz Custom … 0.042345 x86 06/2012
12 10 Sequoia- BlueGene/Q Power BQC 16C 1,60 GHz Cus… 0.041872 x86 06/2012
28 39 Vulcan- BlueGene/Q Power BQC 16C 1,600GHz Cust… 0.041019 x86 06/2013
22 32 Shaheen II- Cray XC40 Xeon E5-2698v3 16C 2,3GH… 0.040180 x86 05/2015
43 55 HPC2- iDataPlex DX360M4 Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 1… 0.039853 GPU 06/2014
17 27 Pleiades- SGI ICE X Intel Xeon E5-2670/E5-2680… 0.039750 x86 11/2016
56 271 Graham- Huawei X6800 V3 Xeon E5-2683 v4 16C 2,… 0.039539 GPU 06/2017
45 62 Mistral- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2680v3 12C 2,5G… 0.039525 x86 06/2016
13 9 Titan- Cray XK7 Opteron 6274 16C 2,200GHz Cray… 0.039264 GPU 11/2012
19 34 Pangea- SGI ICE X Xeon Xeon E5-2670/ E5-2680v3… 0.039202 x86 06/2016
20 30 Hazel Hen- Cray XC40 Xeon E5-2680v3 12C 2,5GHz… 0.038174 x86 11/2014
47 92 Tianhe-2 LvLiang Solution- Tianhe-2 LvLiang In… 0.037723 MIC 11/2014
38 42 Cray XC40 Xeon E5-2695v4 18C 2,1GHz Aries inte… 0.034507 x86 06/2016
37 43 Cray XC40 Xeon E5-2695v4 18C 2,1GHz Aries inte… 0.034507 x86 06/2016
52 105 Tera-1000-1- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2698v3 16C … 0.033772 x86 06/2016
44 77 occigen2- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2690v4 14C 2,6… 0.031797 x86 06/2017
7 3 Sunway TaihuLight- Sunway MPP Sunway SW26010 2… 0.031283 Sunway 06/2016
59 230 Sid- bullx DLC 720 Xeon E5-2695v4 18C 2,1GHz I… 0.030718 x86 06/2016
58 360 Cartesius 2- Bullx DLC B710/B720 Blades Xeon E… 0.027578 x86 06/2015
60 212 Endeavor- Intel Cluster Intel Xeon Gold 6148/X… 0.025893 MIC 11/2017
29 186 ARCHER- Cray XC30 Intel Xeon E5 v2 12C 2,700GH… 0.024436 x86 11/2014
27 64 SuperMUC- iDataPlex DX360M4 Xeon E5-2680 8C 2,… 0.024338 x86 06/2012
42 231 Curie thin nodes- Bullx B510 Xeon E5-2680 8C 2… 0.023917 x86 06/2012
30 134 Edison- Cray XC30 Intel Xeon E5-2695v2 12C 2,4… 0.020987 x86 06/2014
61 416 EAGLE- Huawei E9000 Blade Server Xeon E5-2697v… 0.015520 x86 11/2015
62 487 Lomonosov- T-Platforms T-Blade2/1,1 Xeon X5570… 0.000621 x86 06/2011

Notes: Some systems are mixed, e.g. JURECA (11/2017 upgrade) has Kepler GPUs (2015) and Xeon Phi accelerators (2017), which is categorized as “GPU” arch (probably wrong categorization and likely benchmarked for a sub-system). For SuperMUC-NG, no official power-numbers are yet available, maybe 3-6 MW are likely (estimating 69-35 MFlop/Ws).

Unofficial Green HPCG

The top places are taken by Nvidia P100 & V100 GPUs, likely due to two reasons: a significant efficiency improvement in Pascal and Volta and (finally) the launch of multi-accelerator nodes in large systems.

(Karl, if you are reading this: let’s put new numbers in your post to falsify or proof the first point 😉 )

On the second group is taken by (2017) MIC systems. I tried to group by “launch” of systems in TOP500 submissions, looking at an evolution over time. One can see that there was already a significant gap in 2016/17 between the two which has now been widened with Knights Hill being canceled and Knights Mill (likely also a LINPACK/ML focused hardware) not yet released.

As a little surprise, the RISC architecture SPARC64 which launched in year 2011 is still amazingly well positioned. Even today, it is close to recently built x86 systems. Let’s see where the upcoming A64FXwill be heading.

Sunway’s SW26010, introduced in 2016, is surprisingly low in our little comparison.

Green HPCG over time

Conclusions

General purpose RISC architectures are leading in this comparison even more than in the official Green500. In that sense, it would be really interesting if a power consumption number was submitted for Sandia’s Astra (Cavium ThunderX2) cluster. But either way, is our comparison fair?

Likely not more than any other metric for calculating efficiency. But let’s assume that most scientific HPC applications lie somewhere between the official LINPACK and HPCG benchmarks, so we should consider both metrics for efficiency as well.

Data

An interactive Jupyter Notebook and the HPCG data with added system power consumption have been uploaded to DOI:10.14278/rodare.68

Enjoy playing with it!

Updates

2018-11-18 3:38PM (CET): Avoid implying that HPL is able to use FP16 tensor cores already for TOP500 benchmarks. Clarified with an additional sentence and link to a recent paper, thanks Timothy!

Axel Huebl is a computational physicist who specializes in next-generation, laser plasma-based particle accelerators. Huebl and others reinvented the particle-in-cell algorithm to simulate plasma-physics with 3D simulations of unprecedented detail on leadership-scale many-core supercomputers such as Titan (ORNL). Through this line of research, Huebl also derives models to understand and predict promising regimes for applications such as radiation therapy of cancer with laser-driven ion beams. Interacting closely with experimental scientists, their simulations are showing that plasma-based particle accelerators may yield numerous scientific advances in industrial and medical applications. Huebl was part of a team that were Gordon-Bell prize finalists at SC13.