Cloud Computing: ARM reveals more details on supercomputer architecture plans

Grazed from Computing. Author: Graeme Burton.

ARM has revealed more details about the Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE) technology it is developing for the ARMv8-A architecture that Fujitsu is planning to deploy in the Post-K supercomputer it is building for Japan’s RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science. Detailed at the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California today, SVE is capable of handling vectors from 128 to 2,048 bits in length, and is intended for supercomputer makers like Fujitsu to help them adopt ARM products and deploy them in the world’s biggest and most powerful computers.

SVE is a flexible extension to the ARM instruction set that can shift vector calculations from software into hardware, with the scheduler arranging calculations depending on the hardware available. ARM engineers will, shortly, submit patches to the Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC) and LLVM compiler infrastructure project to support SVE auto-vectorisation…

This will enable developers to take advantage of the technology without having to customise their applications accordingly. Compiled programs will also be portable and will be able to run on any microprocessor with SVE without needing to recompile the source code…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2468529/arm-reveals-more-details-on-supercomputer-architecture-plans