The fastest computer in the world is folding!

[fantomfreq]

I read this on CNN's front page. Apparently IBM has developed the new fastest computer in the world. The old holder of that title, Earth Simulator, can run 35.86 Teraflops. The new IBM computer, called Blue Gene, can perform 36 Teraflops. It's called Blue Gene because it simulates the folding of human proteins(!) Anyway, here's the link to the article.

[Pitch]

and has 16,250 processors and takes up eight racks of space

That is alot of TIM.

[fantomfreq]

I wonder what the power consumption is on that thing....

[Daniel ~]

Great to see this! But what strikes me is that I can remember when Number #1 put some real distance between itself and Number #2. Now they are just inching forward it seems...

In any case, Thanks IBM!

[5|*42]

'Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plans to install the Blue Gene/L system next year with 130,000 processors and 64 racks, half a tennis court in size.'
wow
screw 64 bit, they've got 64 rack....lol

[RussianMissile1]

i like the last line in the article.

[Daniel ~]

Well hell "I" can do things Blue Gene can't as well! Sounds like sour grapes to me.":O}

But having gotten time to read the article; I should think they will see a bit more speed increase when they go from 16,000 to 130,000 CPUs!

The things a guy could do with that! LOL

[Aedan]

The Earth Simulator has done pretty well for a machine that is 3 years old!

Mind you, if you had a setup with 8200 GeForce FX 5900 graphics cards, you could just top 36TFLOPS.

[Daniel ~]

That's a pretty picture! ":O}

[GrahamGarside]

Originally Posted by fantomfreq

I wonder what the power consumption is on that thing....

Probabally the same as a small town, thats what the earth computer consumed anyway at 12.8MW
some how antec truepower doesn't seem such an appropriate name for a psu
I'm curious though, ibm doesn't strike me as a company doing this in the open and genrous nature that we all do with f@h, and theres been a lot of fuss in the past over companys patenting genomes that they've discovered the functions of, so will ibm own any discoveries?

[GrahamGarside]

I see also they've gone for scalar instead of vector so it's not always the fastest and it has 3 times as many processors

[Daniel ~]

Who said that!? Who said,:
"You've gotta laugh when you fall off a sofa"

It seems so familure...?

[GrahamGarside]

I'll give you a clue:

'AAH HAA!'

[Daniel ~]

I remain clueless

[GrahamGarside]

you probabally don't know unless you watch bbc america

I'll give one more clue:

'Dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan, dan.....dan, dan, dan.........Dan!'

[alexkerhead]

it is a cluster, not a real whole pc, if you know what i mean.

[Daniel ~]

Still clueless...but that's a catchy tune! ":O}

[Toro]

i wonder if they have a UPS system in place for that bad boy


ps whats a Teraflop when its at home?

[GrahamGarside]

it's a trillion floating point calculations

[Razorfish]

Originally Posted by Toro

i wonder if they have a UPS system in place for that bad boy

The "HPCX" the supercomputer where I work has a UPS, it can cut in with juice within somthing like 1 or half a mains frequency cycle, don’t know if this is correct but at that figure it would cut in within one fiftieth of a second of loosing power! The UPS itself is one of the world’s fastest starting diesel engines. If you want to read about it go to.
http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/about/gallery/

It’s the 18th fastest in the world, so it should put the new IBM one into perspective. Ive actually have been in that room! It’s scary!