March 6, 2003Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL 1 Crystal Ball Panel Thomas Sterling California Institute of Technology and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory March 6, 2003 Presentation to the 7 th Workshop on Distributed Supercomputing :

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL2 Focus Questions  What does the future hold for supercomputing?  What do we want to see?

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL3 Shape of the Crystal Ball (1) timelines  Enabling device technologies  Supercomputer architectures and execution models  Programming models and languages  Compiler technology and runtime system responsibilities  Operating systems  Persistent storage, file systems, and external I/O capabilities  Reliability, fault tolerance, and failure recovery  Machine intelligence in machine programming and management  Resources: size, cost, power, time to program, time to solution  Breakthroughs in science, technology, commerce, and national security through computational advances

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL4 Shape of the Crystal Ball (2) driver factors  Hard Factors Technology opportunities Moore’s Law and when does it flatline Alternative or avant garde devices (e.g. RSFQ, MRAM, Spin, quantum) Innovative concepts in computational structures and paradigms Costs of machines Costs of programming Mission requirements and level of urgency (the “counter-costs”)  Soft Factors Mainstream market pressures Legacy codes & languages Government funding  Mushy Factors Vision or lack thereof Learning curve and reticence Conservative culture Disinterest and/or lack of will

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL5 Future or Fiction 100 Mflops 1 Gflops 10 Gflops 100 Gflops 1 Tflops 10 Tflops 100 Tflops 1 Pflops 10 Pflops 100 Pflops 1 Eflops 10 Eflops SUM N=1 N=500 An extrapolation of the Linpack Top-500 List of supercomputers where N=1 is the fastest machine, and Sum is aggregate performance of all. Courtesy of Thomas Sterling

March 6, 2003 Thomas Sterling - Caltech & JPL6 Panelists  Al Geist, ORNL  Mike Merrill, NSA  Thomas Stricker, ETH  Bill Gropp, ANL  Bill Camp, SNL