The the French national High-Performance Computing organization (GENCI) composed among others by the French Atomic Energy Authority (CEA) just order to Bull one of the first supercomputer (a large-scale PC cluster) using an hybrid architecture exploiting GPUs as high performance computational resource. This cluster will be part of CCRT (the Center for Research and Technology computing) and installed in the the French Atomic Energy Authority’s Directorate of Military Affairs center (CEA/DAM) of Bruyères le Châtel.
This cluster will use 48 NVidia Tesla GPU modules that are very likely to be based on the next NVIDIA processor generation, the GT200, especially because this generation will support double precision (64 bits floating points) in hardware (but the question is still the cost of this). Each GPU module is said to be composed of 512 cores that let supposed that they will be composed of two GT200 GPUs providing 256 Stream Processors each. Since I already heard rumors about a 240 Stream Processors configuration for the GT200, it is likely to be composed of 16 Multi Processors of 16 Stream Processors each. This would allow a GTX version composed of 15 MP and an ultra version composed of 16MP.
I know quite well the CEA/DAM center since I did an internship here a few years ago, and I know a few guys here who I am sure will be very happy with this new very cool toy ! ;-D
Sources:
– http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/43165-premier-supercalculateur-GPU-France-Tesla.htm
– http://www.wcm.bull.com/internet/pr/rend.jsp?DocId=350335&lang=fr