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Exascale Computing

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Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing

Synonyms

Exaflop computing; Exaop computing

Definition

Exascale computing refers to computing with systems that deliver performance in the range of 1018 (exa) operations per second.

Discussion

Introduction

In computing literature, it is customary to measure progress in factors of 1000. The term exa, standing for 1018 or 10006, is derived from the Greek word \({\epsilon }^{''}\xi \), meaning six. Thus exascale computing refers to systems that execute between 10006 and 10007 operations per second. This performance level represents a 1000-fold increase in capability over petascale computing, which itself represents a 1000-fold increase over terascale computing.

There is often confusion over how to denote the performance of a system. The most common measure is the number of double-precision floating-point operations that are completed every second (flops) when the system is running the Linpack dense linear algebra benchmark. By this measure, an exascale system is one which can execute...

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Nair, R. (2011). Exascale Computing. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_284

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