Janus2: An FPGA-based supercomputer for spin glass simulations

We describe the past and future of the Janus project. The collaboration started in 2006 and deployed in early 2008 the Janus supercomputer, a facility that allowed to speed-up Monte Carlo Simulations of a class of model glassy systems and provided unprecedented results for some paradigms in Statistical Mechanics. The Janus Supercomputer was based on state-of-the-art FPGA technology, and provided almost two order of magnitude improvement in terms of cost/performance and power/performance ratios. More than four years later, commercial facilities are closing-up in terms of performance, but FPGA technology has largely improved. A new generation supercomputer, Janus2, will be able to improve by more than one orders of magnitude with respect to the previous one, and will accordingly be again the best choice in Monte Carlo simulations of Spin Glasses for several years to come with respect to commercial solutions. © 2012 ACM.