Power Efficient Supercomputing

The search for new scientific knowledge is now driven in large part by supercomputers, and demand for new supercomputers continues to increase such that overall performance is limited by the amount of power and cooling capacity available. The problem is such that the high performance computing needed to study the environment is itself changing the environment by drawing from our energy resources. Supercomputers based on commodity servers are not optimized for the purpose, but specialized hardware can achieve superior power efficiency, though often at the sacrifice of programmability or other features. Cognitive Electronics has invented a new type of supercomputing system capable of dramatically increasing the performance of existing high performance software while decreasing power consumption. Cognitive Electronics desires to complete a prototype (Phase I) and fully develop its first supercomputer (Phase II) in order to sell cloud computing time, in the form of virtual clusters, at much greater scale and lower cost than is otherwise available. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: Supercomputers with improved power efficiency promise many advancements including higher total performance, providing the ability to detect dangerous weather earlier and with more accuracy, achieve higher probability of finding cures for diseases, and better observe risk in financial systems.