Truly Heterogeneous HPC: Co-design to Achieve What Science Needs from HPC

Suma George Cardwell, Craig M. Vineyard, William Severa, Frances S. Chance, Fredrick H. Rothganger, Felix Wang, Srideep Musuvathy, Corinne Teeter, James B. Aimone

Abstract: Future high-performance computing (HPC) platforms increasingly depend on heterogeneous node architectures to meet power and performance requirements. While modern HPC design largely incorporates GPUs with CPU resources, there is potential to further integrate novel forms of computing. The ability to leverage efficient, non-conventional computing technologies would be a fundamentally disruptive development in advancing HPC. Neuromorphic computing is such an emerging technology, which would interest the HPC community, due to its potential for implementing large-scale calculations with an extremely low power footprint. We will explore the example of mapping the connectome of the brain to illustrate advantages of using a heterogeneous system that incorporates neuromorphic hardware.