Tech Talk | The rise of supercomputers and quantum computing

Major initiatives are under way in the US and Europe, as well as elsewhere to develop supercomputers and quantum computers for advanced computational challenges.

With modelling of systems and processes becoming increasingly complex – such as the energy system, with growing numbers of connections and combinations of energy flows – traditional computation is unable to keep up, either being too slow and costly to run for such tasks or the tasks simply being beyond them.

However, such arethe scale of the next gen computing systems and the R&D effort required that they are being developed as community facilities in ‘national programmes’ or by the IT giants such as IBM and Microsoft, not to mention Elon Musk’s proposed ‘Colossus’.

For example, in the US the ‘Exascale computing project’ ran from 2016 to 2024 to deliver an exascale computing ecosystem and in Europe the ‘European high-performance computing joint undertaking’ is under way to deliver a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure.

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To put these systems into perspective, whereas a typical home PC has a performance in the gigaflop range (a ‘flop’ being a measure of an operation/second), the early supercomputers of the 1990s reached a speed about 10 times greater and current state of the art exascale computers are a million times faster again.

The first computer to break this exascale barrier was the ‘Frontier’ machine at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2022, which also is currently the world’s fastest, with the ‘Aurora’ machine at Argonne National Laboratory the second in May 2024 but also taking first place for its AI performance.

Microsoft’s Eagle, comprised of a distributed network of systems in the cloud, is third in the supercomputer performance ranking, while Europe’s fastest supercomputer is the pre-exascale Lumi machine at the CSC Data Centre in Kajaani in central Finland in fifth place.

Quantum computers, still in the petaflop range, haven’t yet reached exascale speeds but the expectation is that in the future they will present significant growth in computational power.

Ultimately though, when it comes to usage, speed isn’t the final defining factor and these computers are tools better suited to certain use cases than others.

For example, quantum computers are well suited to optimisation and simulation problems.

The energy sector is of course only one user group of these high performance computers, with some of the areas being investigated including grid battery placement, grid operations and new material combinations for renewable energy.

An emerging area for quantum computers is cybersecurity, with the prospect that these machines could break current encryption algorithms and the consequent need for quantum-based defences.

Growing Europe’s supercomputing ecosystem

Technology doesn’t stand still and continues to evolve and grow and the European joint undertaking is procuring and installing supercomputers across Europe – including the first exascale computer in Germany – as well as in the process of deploying a quantum computing infrastructure integrated into the supercomputers.

In parallel, a research and innovation programme is under way to develop a full European supercomputing supply chain, from processors and software to applications and the know-how for developing European expertise.

For example, in August a call was launched for the installation of the EuroQCS quantum computer to be integrated into the pre-exascale Leonardo system at Cineca’s Bologna site in Italy.

This was followed in September with a call to tender for the ‘Alice Recoque’ exascale supercomputer to be located at the CEA’s supercomputing centre in Bruyères-le-Châtel to the south of Paris in France.

Starting in 2024, the undertaking also has a new artificial intelligence (AI) mandate to develop and operate ‘AI factories’ to be centred around the supercomputing facilities to support the growth of an AI ecosystem in Europe.

These are envisaged as ‘one-stop shops’ for users to facilitate access to services, as well as skills development and user support.

A first call for hosting these AI factories was released in September, along with a call for hosting an AI optimised supercomputer.

Advancing supercomputers in the US

With the energy consumption of AI a growing concern, the energy efficiency of high performance computing systems is a key issue for research.

Among recent initiatives in the US, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced the ‘New Frontiers’ research programme to advance technologies and drive new capabilities for future supercomputers.

The programme worth $23 million is planned to initiate partnerships with multiple companies to accelerate the R&D of critical technologies with an emphasis on energy efficiency for the next generation of post-exascale computing in the 2029 and beyond time frame.

The challenge to be addressed is that for the technologies targeted in that timeframe, processors are unlikely to get faster without producing more heat, aka Dennard scaling, while according to Moore’s law computer chips are unlikely to get much smaller.

In parallel with this funding announcement, the US DOE has awarded $65 million to ten projects to advance quantum computing in its latest tranche in this area. The focus is on software, control systems and algorithmic advancements that will demonstrate quantum computing’s utility for scientific research problems in DOE’s mission space.

Commented Ceren Susut, DOE associate director of Science for Advanced Scientific Computing Research of the awards: “Quantum computers may ultimately revolutionise many fields by solving problems that are currently out of reach.”

This article no more than scratches the surface of what is a major topic. For a more in-depth insight on quantum computing and how E.ON is advancing its use in the energy sector, look out for my article in the forthcoming The Guide, to be distributed at Enlit Europe in October.

Jonathan Spencer Jones

Specialist writer
Smart Energy International

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