Author: Kim Martineau | MIT Quest for Intelligence<\/p>\n
IBM designed Summit, the fastest supercomputer on Earth, to run the calculation-intensive models that power modern artificial intelligence (AI). Now MIT is about to get a slice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
IBM pledged earlier this year to donate an $11.6 million computer cluster to MIT modeled after the architecture of Summit, the supercomputer it built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. The donated cluster is expected to come online this fall when the\u00a0MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing<\/a>\u00a0opens its doors, allowing researchers to run more elaborate AI models to tackle a range of problems, from developing a better hearing aid to designing a longer-lived lithium-ion battery.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re excited to see a range of AI projects at MIT get a computing boost, and we can\u2019t wait to see what magic awaits,\u201d says\u00a0John E. Kelly III<\/a>, executive vice president of IBM, who announced the gift in February at MIT\u2019s\u00a0launch celebration<\/a>\u00a0of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n IBM has named the cluster Satori<\/a>, a Zen Buddhism term for \u201csudden enlightenment.\u201d Physically the size of a shipping container,\u00a0Satori is intellectually closer to a Ferrari, capable of zipping through 2 quadrillion calculations per second. That\u2019s the\u00a0equivalent of each person on Earth performing more than\u00a010 million multiplication problems each second for an entire year, making Satori nimble enough to\u00a0join the middle ranks of the world\u2019s\u00a0500 fastest<\/a>\u00a0computers.<\/p>\n Rapid progress in AI has fueled a relentless demand for computing power to train more elaborate models on ever-larger datasets. At the same time, federal funding for academic computing facilities has been on a three-decade decline.\u00a0Christopher Hill<\/a>, director of MIT\u2019s Research Computing Project, puts the current demand at MIT at five times\u00a0what the Institute can offer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIBM\u2019s gift couldn\u2019t come at a better time,\u201d says\u00a0Maria Zuber<\/a>, a geophysics professor and MIT\u2019s vice president of research. \u201cThe opening of the new college will only increase demand for computing power. Satori will go a long way in helping to ease the crunch.\u201d<\/p>\n The computing gap was immediately apparent to\u00a0John Cohn<\/a>, chief scientist at the\u00a0MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab<\/a>, when the lab opened last year. \u201cThe cloud alone wasn\u2019t giving us all that we needed for challenging AI training tasks,\u201d he says. \u201cThe expense and long run times made us ask, could we bring more compute power here, to MIT?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a mission Satori was built to fill, with IBM Power9 processors, a fast internal network, a large memory, and 256 graphics processing units (GPUs). Designed to rapidly process video-game images, graphics processors have become the workhorse for modern AI applications. Satori, like Summit, has been configured to wring as much power from each GPU as possible.<\/p>\n IBM\u2019s gift follows a history of collaborations with MIT that have paved the way for computing breakthroughs. In 1956, IBM helped launch the MIT Computation Center with the donation of an IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer to handle complex math. Nearly three decades later, IBM helped fund\u00a0Project Athena<\/a>, an initiative that brought networked computing to campus. Together, these initiatives spawned time-share operating systems, foundational programming languages, instant messaging, and the network-security protocol, Kerberos, among other technologies.\u00a0<\/p>\n More recently, IBM\u00a0agreed to invest<\/a>\u00a0$240 million over 10 years to establish the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a founding sponsor of MIT\u2019s\u00a0Quest for Intelligence<\/a>. In addition to filling the computing gap at MIT, Satori will be configured to allow researchers to exchange data with all major commercial cloud providers, as well as prepare their code to run on IBM\u2019s Summit supercomputer.<\/p>\n Josh McDermott<\/a>, an associate professor at MIT\u2019s\u00a0Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences<\/a>, is currently using Summit to develop a better hearing aid, but before he and his students could run their models, they spent countless hours getting the code ready. In the future, Satori will expedite the process, he says, and in the longer term, make more ambitious projects possible.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re currently building computer systems to model one sensory system but we\u2019d like to be able to build models that can see, hear and touch,\u201d he says. \u201cThat requires a much bigger scale.\u201d<\/p>\n Richard Braatz<\/a>, the Edwin R. Gilliland Professor at MIT\u2019s\u00a0Department of Chemical Engineering<\/a>, is using AI to improve\u00a0lithium-ion battery technologies. He and his colleagues recently developed a machine learning algorithm to predict a battery\u2019s lifespan from past charging cycles, and now, they\u2019re developing multiscale simulations to test new materials and designs for extending battery life.\u00a0<\/strong>With a boost from a computer like Satori, the simulations could capture key physical and chemical processes that accelerate discovery. \u201cWith better predictions, we can bring new ideas to market faster,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Satori will be housed at a silk mill-turned data center, the\u00a0Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center<\/a> (MGHPCC) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and connect to MIT via dedicated, high-speed fiber optic cables.\u00a0At 150 kilowatts, Satori will consume as much energy as a mid-sized building at MIT, but its carbon footprint will be nearly fully offset by the use of hydro and nuclear power at the Holyoke facility.\u00a0Equipped with\u00a0energy-efficient cooling, lighting, and power distribution, the MGHPCC was the first academic data center to receive\u00a0LEED-platinum status, the highest green-building award, in 2011.<\/p>\n \u201cSiting Satori at Holyoke minimizes its carbon emissions and environmental impact without compromising its scientific impact,\u201d says John Goodhue, executive director of the MGHPCC.<\/p>\n Visit the Satori website<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"