Zettascale computing refers to computing systems capable of calculating at least "10²¹ IEEE 754 Double Precision (64-bit) operations (multiplications and/or additions) per second (

zetta A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a multiple or submultiple of the unit. All metric prefixes used today are decadic. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to any unit symbol. The pre ...

FLOPS Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measu ...

)". It is a measure of

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

performance, and is a hypothetical performance barrier. A zettascale computer system could generate more single floating point data in one second than was stored by the total digital means on Earth in the first quarter of 2011.

Definitions

Floating point operations per second Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measur ...

(FLOPS) are one measure of

computer performance In computing, computer performance is the amount of useful work accomplished by a computer system. Outside of specific contexts, computer performance is estimated in terms of accuracy, efficiency and speed of executing computer program instruction ...

. FLOPS can be recorded in different measures of precision, however the standard measure (used by the

TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non-distributed computing, distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these ...

supercomputer list) uses 64 bit (

double-precision floating-point format Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Double pre ...

) operations per second using the High Performance LINPACK (HPLinpack)

benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

Forecasts

In 2018, Chinese scientists predicted that the first zettascale system will be assembled in 2035. This forecast looks plausible from a historical point of view as it took some 12 years to progress from the terascale machines (10¹²) to petascale systems (10¹⁵) and then 14 more years to move to exascale computers (10¹⁸). Scientists forecast that the zettascale systems are likely to be data-centric; this proposition means that the system components will move to the data, not vice versa, as the data volumes in the future are anticipated to be so large that moving data will be too expensive. It is also forecasted that zettascale systems are expected to be decentralized—because such a model can be the shortest route to achieving zettascale performance, with millions of less powerful components linked and working together to form a collective hypercomputer that is more powerful than any single machine. Such decentralized systems may be designed to mimick complex biologic systems, and the next cybernetic paradigm may be based on liquid cybernetic systems with embodied intelligence solutions.

Potential configuration

China’s

National University of Defense Technology The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT; ) is a national public research university headquartered in Kaifu, Changsha, Hunan, China. It is affiliated with the Central Military Commission. The university is part of Project 211, ...

propose the following metrics: *Power consumption: 100 MW *Power efficiency: 10 teraflops/watt *Peak performance per node: 10 petaflops *Communication bandwidth between nodes: 1.6 terabits/second *I/O bandwidth: 10 to 100 petabytes/second *Storage capacity: 1.0 zettabyte *Floor space: 1000 square meters

Problems

Moore's law Moore's law is the observation that the Transistor count, number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and Forecasting, projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of ...

nears its natural limits, supercomputing will face serious physical problems in moving from exascale to zettascale systems, making the decade after 2020 a vital period to develop key high-performance computing techniques. Many forecasters, including

Gordon Moore Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors i ...

himself, expect Moore's law to end by around 2025. Another challenge for reaching zettascale performance can be enormous energy consumption.

Applications

*Zettascale computers will be able to accurately forecast global weather for 2 weeks in the future. *Zettascale calculations will also be able to significantly reduce the time required for astrophysical simulations of such rare phenomena as black holes, neutron star mergers, and supernovae. For example, the calculating of a 3D model of shock wave instability from a collapsing supernova core, which takes 1 million hours on petaflops computers and 1000 hours on exaflops machines, can be done in just one hour on zettaflops systems. *Zettascale or yottascale systems might be able to accurately model the whole human brain.

References

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite web , title=What is zettaflops? - Definition from WhatIs.com , url=https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/zettaflops , publisher=WhatIs.com , access-date=24 August 2021 , language=en {{cite web , last1=Feldman , first1=Michael , title=Supercomputing Is Heading Toward an Existential Crisis , url=https://www.top500.org/news/supercomputing-is-heading-toward-an-existential-crisis/ , publisher= top500.org , access-date=24 August 2021 , date=11 December 2018 {{cite web , title=FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS , url=https://www.top500.org/resources/frequently-asked-questions/ , website=www.top500.org , access-date=23 June 2020 {{cite book , editor1-last=Kogge , editor1-first=Peter , title=ExaScale Computing Study: Technology Challenges in Achieving Exascale Systems , date=1 May 2008 , publisher=United States Government , url=https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/~george/aybi199/ExascaleReport.pdf , access-date=28 September 2008

External links

Perspectives on High-Performance Computing in a Big Data WorldTowards Zettascale Computing on Exascale Platforms
Supercomputing