Supercomputer Steps up the Pace

squapplesquapple
edited June 2007 in conversations
The world's fastest commercial supercomputer has been launched by computer giant IBM.
Blue Gene/P is three times more potent than the current fastest machine, BlueGene/L, also built by IBM.

The latest number cruncher is capable of operating at so called "petaflop" speeds - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

source

Comments

  • chrischris
    edited 5:29AM
    i'm going to get one for halo 2 :)
  • squapplesquapple
    edited 5:29AM
    You could probably use it for emails as well !
  • BiffBiff
    edited 5:29AM
    NOTHING CAN COMPETE WITH MY (client's) BEIGE G3 CLUSTER!
  • squapplesquapple
    edited 5:29AM
    How many G3's Biff?
  • BiffBiff
    edited June 2007
    As of Tuesday, 57. Maybe 56 by the end of the week. They've all been overclocked to 350+ with higher than normal bus speeds and a few G4 ZIF processors in there.

    Interestingly, it's faster, and takes less power, than 4 quad-intel towers. Takes up a lot more space though.
  • bullbull
    edited 5:29AM
    what's it used for, biff?
  • BiffBiff
    edited June 2007
    Crunching numbers. Mersenne primes, ballistics, orbital mechanics, that kind of thing.

    It's a cluster on the cheap. A stone soup cluster, as it were. About 20 hours of labor, the beige G3s were had for <$15 each. As sawteeth get cheaper/free, then they'll be added and the beiges will get replaced.
  • McKsMcKs
    edited 5:29AM
    1,000 trillion calculations per second, and it's got options:
    "However, it can be expanded to pack 884,736 processors, a configuration that would allow the machine to compute 3,000 trillion calculations per second (three petaflops)."

    damn, it's hard to grasp there are actually jobs that this thing won't be able to finish in a couple of seconds.
  • mickmick
    edited 5:29AM
    i read somewhere that it's the equivalent of a stack of high-end laptops 4+ km tall.
  • squapplesquapple
    edited 5:29AM
    Nice, Biff.

    I wouldnt have thought of using old beige machines. Very resourceful indeed.

    Thats a lot of laptops Mick!
  • mickmick
    edited 5:29AM
    well... i had the "4" right, but it was preceded by a two and a point.
    equivalent to the combined processing power of a 2.4-kilometre-high pile of laptop computers.
    from The New Scientist

    sorry.

    Biff's array is maybe not as tall, but it IS beige. :)
  • squapplesquapple
    edited 5:29AM
    still a huge amount of laptops anyway Mick ! And, it may well be "4" if they were older, thicker laptops so I'll accept your first quote :happy:
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