A new supercomputer under construction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, called Blue Waters, is expected to set a new speed record and reign as the world’s biggest and fastest computer. But at a conference at the university this week, some researchers expressed concern that software is not keeping pace, meaning that scholars may not be able to take full advantage of the mammoth machine when it opens for operation next year.
“These new machines are going to force parallel programming on folks who just are not quite ready,” said Merle Giles, director of the private-sector program at the university’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications. “Software codes are going to have to be accelerated in order to embrace the new hardware.” The “software gap” between what today’s researchers use to run simulations on supercomputers and what the new computers could do is a major issue, he said at a conference with industry leaders. The event runs through Thursday, and video of the event is streamed online.
The Blue Waters supercomputer, which will take up an entire building (pictured above) will actually be a series of 300,000 computer processors running in unison—but creating software programs that can coordinate all those processors is a complex task. “Many faculty and scientists will essentially dumb down their models to fit in the box of the day,” said Mr. Giles, and few in business or at universities have created tools to take advantage of the latest parallel machines.