http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/ap_on_...astest_computerQUOTE
WASHINGTON - Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.
The technology breakthrough was accomplished by engineers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Corp. on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.
The computer, named Roadrunner, is twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which itself is three times faster than any of the world's other supercomputers, according to IBM.
To put the computer's speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world's 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.
"The computer is a speed demon. It will allow us to solve tremendous problems," said Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons research and maintains the warhead stockpile.
But officials said the computer also could have a wide range of other applications in civilian engineering, medicine and science, from developing biofuels and designing more fuel-efficient cars to finding drug therapies and providing services to the financial industry.
Crazy how fast these are getting.
Right now New Mexico holds #3 and #6 spots on the Top500 list. Next list is due out next Tuesday the 17th. Roadrunner may make this list, and RedStorm of Sandia (#6) is getting some big upgrades.
I am currently working with the New Mexico Computing Applications Center who has "Encanto" the third fastest supercomputer on the Nov 2007 list. The center obtained three smaller versions of Encanto to go into the three research universities in the state as gateway and testing centers for jobs to go onto Encanto. One of those smaller systems, I am working on setting up at New Mexico Tech.
We've pushed our little machine to 1.725 Teraflops, which is less than 1/500th of what Roadrunner can do, but 500 times more than what the previous "Roadrunner" from UNM in the late 90s could do.
Moore's law in effect.
10 Jun, 2008 - 08:32 AM
out of stupidity.. thus that computer comes with windows? or linux? ... lmao.. I can't imagine a desktop pc that fast.. and what could A normal person do with it..
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