Further to be one of the maximum powerful computers in the world and currently ranked a hundred and five on the Top500 listing, France’s Jean Zay supercomputer is now the first HPC to have a photonic coprocessor.
Not like conventional processors which use electric current, LightOn’s photonic coprocessor transmits and processes information through the usage of light.
The agency’s photonics coprocessor changed into brought to the Jean Zay supercomputer below a pilot application with GENCI and IDRIS and represents no longer best a technological step forward but additionally a primary for the industry.
So far, LightOn’s generation has effectively been used by a network of researchers given that 2018.
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Now even though, its photonic coprocessor may be available to pick customers of the Jean Zay studies community over the next few months who will use the device to conduct studies on machine learning foundations, differential privacy, satellite imaging analysis, and natural language processing (NLP) obligations.
LightOn photonic coprocessor
LightOn’s Optical Processing Unit (OPU) uses photonics to hurry up randomized algorithms at a completely huge scale. But, it additionally works in tandem with standard silicon CPUs and Nvidia’s A100 GPU generation.
The agency’s Aurora 2 OPU powers its appliance integrated computing unit which is built right into a 2U shape aspect in order that it could be quick and without difficulty included in records facilities or in this example, a supercomputer.
In keeping with LightOn, its appliance can reach a height performance of 1.5 PetaOPS at 30W TDP and may supply performance that 8 to 40 times better than GPU-simplest acceleration.
CEO and co-founder of LightOn, Igor Carror provided further insight into the pilot application that noticed its appliance included in the Jean Zay supercomputer in a press release, pronouncing:
“This pilot program integrating a new computing era inside one of the world’s Supercomputers might not have been viable without the specific commitment of visionary agencies such as GENCI and IDRIS/CNRS.
Together with the emergence of Quantum Computing, this international ultimate strengthens our view that the following step after exascale supercomputing could be about hybrid computing”
