SPECIAL SESSIONS

Monday September 7, 2015

1A-E-O2 Sep 7 - Afternoon (2:00-6:30 PM)
Electronics - Superconducting Supercomputing

Location: Auditorium Pasteur
Chair: Pascal Febvre (Université Savoie Mont Blanc) and Hannes Toepfer (Technical University Ilmenau)

Driven by Internet traffic, cloud computing, smartphones usage and intensive data crunching applications, the growth of the number of supercomputers is nothing new. Energy consumption by large-scale computing systems is now a non-negligible financial burden. Cooling the cloud is on the business agenda and becomes an ecological issue. Industry of data centers faces the need of energy efficiency to reduce running costs: these account from 10 to 15% of the total cost of building and running a data center for 15 years. In 2010, the worldwide energy drawn by routers and servers was between 1.1 and 1.5% (1.7 and 2.2% in the United States) of the worldwide energy production. In 2011 it was estimated to be 31 GW of electric power.
As stated by the IARPA synopsis of the C3 (standing for Complex Cryogenic Computing) solicitation, today’s high performance computers and the projected exascale computers are based on the same complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies that have supported decades of continuous increase in computer performance. The improvement of performance has slowed down as the characteristic size of devices approaches atomic dimensions. Furthermore, the problem with projected energy demands based on CMOS technology continues without any solution in sight. Hence the decision in the United States to launch a ten years scale Cryogenic Computing Research & Development program to demonstrate a small-scale computer based on superconducting logic with cryogenic memory, that is energy-efficient, scalable, and able to solve crucial and complex problems.
While, in the past, significant technical obstacles prevented serious exploration of superconducting computing, recent innovations have created foundations for a major breakthrough. These include new families of superconducting logic without static power dissipation and new ideas for energy efficient cryogenic memory. A superconducting computer also promises a simplified cooling infrastructure and a greatly reduced footprint.
The special session on supercomputing has been set to present the current international status of superconducting computing. It will feature three talks presenting technologies, achieved results and expectations in Japan, United States and Europe. One talk will focus on the status of cryogenics suitable for the SC computers. Cryogenics is now a well mastered technology invisible for the user. At last one talk will focus on the current work about quantum computing that is currently seen as the next step towards advanced computing at a longer time scale.
A round table will follow the special session to address the requirements for a European initiative and, more generally, to discuss the needs and the actions to take in order to construct a solid technological basis for supercomputers of the future and advanced applications with similar requirements, like processing units for arrays of detectors for astronomy and security applications, for quantum circuits and for telecommunications and metrology applications.

Cryogenic Computer Complexity (C3) program for a new generation of superconducting supercomputers:
Manheimer Marc
IARPA, USA

Japanese efforts on superconducting supercomputers:
FUJIMAKI Akira
Nagoya University, Japan

State of the art of superconducting digital electronics and applications in Europe:
Ortlepp Thomas
Technishe Universität ILMENAU, Germany

Cryogenics for superconducting supercomputers:
Ravex Alain
Absolut System, France

Superconducting processors of quantum information: state of the art, challenges and new routes:
Esteve Daniel
CEA-Saclay, France


The Cryogenic Computing Complexity (C3) program to develop a superconducting computer prototype
MANHEIMER Marc1
1IARPA, USA


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Japanese efforts on superconducting supercomputers
FUJIMAKI Akira1, TANAKA Masamitsu1, SATO Ryo1, NAGASAWA Shuichi2, HIDAKA Mutsuo2
1Nagoya University, Japan, 2Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan


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State of the art of superconducting digital electronics and applications in Europe
ORTLEPP Thomas1
1Technishe Universität ILMENAU, Germany


Superconducting processors of quantum information: state of the art, challenges, new routes
ESTEVE Daniel1
1CEA Saclay, France


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Cryogenics for superconducting electronics
RAVEX Alain1
1Absolut System, France


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