Future Technological Challenges for High Performance Computers

A high performance computer (HPC), sometimes called a supercomputer, is a highspeed, large-scale computer system designed for scientific and technical computations in application areas such as meteorology, molecular and bio-science, energy development, space science and so forth. These applications are called “Grand Challenge Problems” in which the major target is to run application programs within limited time periods. In this talk, architectural and system's key points as well as basic hardware technologies to realize high performance computer systems for grand challenge problems will be presented. Dr. Tadashi Watanabe received the BEEE and MEEE from the University of Tokyo, and PhD in information science from Tohoku University. He joined NEC in 1968. Since then, he has been involved in the development of NEC’s high-end mainframe computers and supercomputers, particularly involved in their architectural designs. He is now in charge of the marketing and product planning of NEC’s high performance computer systems as Vice President of NEC's Computer Platform Business Unit. He received the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly award of 1998 to the contribution of the architectural design of the multiple/parallel vector supercomputers. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies (PDCAT’05) 0-7695-2405-2/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE