He vist que Google ha convocat, en el marc del seu programa de Beques a Professorat Visitant, ajuts a la supercomputació Exacicle (Exacycle), consistents en un mínim de 100 milions d’hores de càlcul als seus ordinadors. Se’n donaran 10, que poden acumular per tant un total de 1000 milions d’hores, o sigui una gigahora, o sigui aprox, 3,6 terasegons, que a una velocitat de càlcul d’uns 2,5 gigaflops proporcionen un tots de 10 zettaflops. (10 seguit de 21 zeros). No acabo d’entendre perquè es diu exacicle, aques programa… potser no prové del prefis “exa” (potència de 18). Hi ha temps de demanar-ne fins al 31 de maig:
Google Exacycle for Visiting Faculty is a new grant program for high-performance, CPU-intensive computing. In its first year, the program invites proposals for large-scale, computationally intensive research projects. The program awards sizable allocations on Google’s computing infrastructure to address grand challenges in science and engineering. We will award a total of approximately one billion core-hours to drive transformational research in diverse fields such as astronomy, biology and medicine, earth sciences, mathematics and physics.
Google Exacycle for Visiting Faculty is not a conventional grant program. We aim to stimulate advances in science and engineering research by supporting the computational needs of projects that push boundaries and reach for remarkable breakthroughs.
Però què crec que pretèn Google?
Google Exacycle for Visiting Faculty is open to all academic researchers who require unusually large computer time allocations in their pursuit of transformational advances in science and engineering. The intent of the program is to support computationally intensive projects that are enabled through the availability of massive computation capability. Both U.S. and international researchers are eligible to apply. Please note that travel requirements, such as passport and visa, as well as expenses related to relocation, travel and cost of living will be the grant recipient’s responsibility.
No totes les aplicacions van bé… els càlculs han de tenir molt poca entrada/sortida, i comunicar-se poc entre les diferents màquines. Suposo que es tracta d’aprofitar la capacitat residual de l’enorme quantitat d’ordinadors de Google:
Proposals that are ideal for Google Exacycle include, but are not limited to, research projects like Folding@Home, Rosetta@Home, various BOINC projects, and grid parameter sweeps. Other examples include large-scale genomic search and alignment, protein family modeling and sky survey image analysis.
The best projects will have a very high number of independent work units, a high CPU to I/O ratio, and no inter-process communication (commonly described as Embarrassingly or Pleasantly Parallel). The higher the CPU to I/O rate, the better the match with the system. Programs must be developed in C/C++ and compiled via Native Client. Awardees will be able to consult an on-site engineering team.
Preference will be given to projects that are fairly high-risk/high-reward with the potential to drastically transform the scientific landscape. Even projects that yield negative results can still provide public data that the community can continue to analyze. At completion of the project, we recommend, but do not require, that all the researcher’s data be made freely available to the academic community.
Alguns dels algorismes del nostre grup de química teòrica i computacional són ben intensius en càlcul de CPU, i permeten ser paral.lelitzats. De problemes interessants en tenim en cartera, però crec que queda clar que Google vol alguna cosa més: projectes trencadors, projects that push boundaries and reach for remarkable breakthroughs.
Tenim algunes setmanes per bastir un projecte trencador!
Referència principal: http://research.google.com/university/relations/visiting_faculty.html
Imatge extreta de l’entrada From Petaflop to Exaflop