Intel to achieve exascale performance by 2020

The chip giant believes its MIC architecture, as well as its software programming model and extreme system scalability, will be key ingredients to crossing the threshold of petascale computing into a 'new era' of super fast, exascale computing. At the 2011 International Super Computing Conference in Hamburg, the company spoke of its 'relentless' pursuit of Moore's Law and announced plans to open three European labs dedicated to achieving this. According to Intel, the labs will create a sustained partner presence in Europe, take advantage of the growing relevance of European high performance computing research and exponentially grow capabilities in computational science, engineering and strategic computing. One of the technical goals of the labs is to create simulation applications that address the energy efficiency challenges of moving to exascale performance. By 2013, Intel expects the top 100 supercomputers in the world to use 1million processors. By 2015, this number is expected to double, and is forecasted to reach 8m units by the end of the decade. The company recently announced that its processor powered supercomputers made up 77% of the latest TOP500 list of supercomputers and nearly 90% of all new systems in 2011. Kirk Skaugen, vp and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group, maintained that the achievement was only the first step in its long term exascale goal. "While Intel Xeon processors are the clear architecture of choice for the current TOP500 list of supercomputers, Intel is further expanding its focus on high performance computing by enabling the industry for the next frontier with our MCI architecture for petascale and future exascale workloads," he said. "Intel is equipped with unparalleled manufacturing technologies, new architecture innovations and a familiar software programming environment that will bring us closer to this exciting exascale goal."