Communications of the ACM
Some Like It Cold: Intelligence Agencies Push For Low-Power Exascale
Credit: Taringa
The U.S. intelligence community is investing in superconductive computing research so it can help institute more efficient, low-power exascale computing. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) launched its Cryogenic Computing Complexity Program earlier this year "to establish superconducting computing as a long-term solution to the power-space-cooling problem and as a successor to end-of-roadmap complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) for high performance computing." The best technology currently available would still produce an exascale system requiring several hundred megawatts to operate, while the transistor is about to reach its scale limits.
The first stage of IARPA's five-year project will focus on developing the technologies needed to demonstrate superconducting computing's value. The project's second stage will involve integrating those technologies into a "small-scale computer based on superconducting logic and cryogenic memory that is energy-efficient, scalable, and able to solve interesting problems." The government believes that "superconducting computing offers an attractive low-power alternative to CMOS with many potential advantages."
Studies show that superconducting technology creates a foundation for 1-petaflop systems that run at only 25 kW and 100-petaflop systems that operate at 200 kW.
From Green Computing Report
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