More on the IARPA's Cryogenic Supercomputer Effort

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has officially commenced a multi-year research effort to develop a superconducting computer as a long-term solution to the power, cooling and space constraints that afflict modern high-performance computing. First revealed in February 2013, when the agency put out a call for proposals, the Cryogenic Computer Complexity (C3) program aims to pave the way for a new generation of superconducting supercomputers that are far more energy efficient than machines based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

Studies indicate the technology, which uses low temperatures in the 4-10 kelvin range to enable information to be transmitted with minimal energy loss, could yield one-petaflop systems that use just 25 kW and 100 petaflop systems that operate at 200 kW, including the cryogenic cooler. Compare this to the current greenest system, the L-CSC supercomputer from the GSI Helmholtz Center, which achieved 5.27 gigaflops-per-watt on the most-recent Green500 list. If scaled linearly to an exaflop supercomputing system, it would consume about 190 megawatts (MW), still quite a bit short of DARPA targets, which range from 20MW to 67MW.

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Beyond Exascale Supercomputers: IARPA Launches Cryogenic Computer Complexity Program

American intelligence agencies announced plans Friday to develop and build a new superconducting supercomputer, one which would increase current computing capacity while simultaneously reducing the energy consumption and physical footprint of the machines.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, a branch of the U.S. intelligence community, said in a press release that the agency has embarked on a multi-year research effort called the Cryogenic Computer Complexity program, or C3.

Current supercomputing utilizes technology that relies on tens of megawatts and requires large amounts of physical space to house the infrastructure and power and cool the components.

C3 hopes to use recent breakthroughs in supercomputing technologies — "new families of superconducting logic without static power dissipation and new ideas for energy efficient cryogenic memory" — to construct a superconducting supercomputer with "a simplified cooling infrastructure and a greatly reduced footprint."

"The power, space, and cooling requirements for current supercomputers based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology are becoming unmanageable," said Marc Manheimer, C3 program manager at IARPA.

"Computers based on superconducting logic integrated with new kinds of cryogenic memory will allow expansion of current computing facilities while staying within space and energy budgets, and may enable supercomputer development beyond the exascale," Manheimer said.

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cryogenics and hpc?  this will only end well.