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My_reddit_account_v3 t1_iwjmbs9 wrote

Reply to comment by DeadFIL in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek

Ok, but why would supercomputers suck? Are they not equipped with arrays of GPUs as well?

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DeadFIL t1_iwjpc1o wrote

Supercomputers cost a lot of money and are generally funded for specific reasons. Supercomputers are generally not very general purpose, but rather particularly built to be as good as possible at one class of task. Some computers will have a lot of CPUs, some will have a lot of GPUs, some will have a lot of both, and some will have completely different types of units that are custom built for a specific task.

It all depends on the supercomputer, but some aren't designed to excel at the ML algorithms. Any of them will do wayyyy better than your home computer due to their processing power, but many will be relatively inefficient.

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My_reddit_account_v3 t1_iwjshyb wrote

Right. I guess what you are saying is you prefer to control the composition of the array of CPUs/GPUs, rather than rely on a “static” supercomputer, right?

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