RSSDOE supercomputer broke the petaflop barrier, conference acknowledges
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 9, 2008, 6:58 PM
Though unofficial news leaked this morning, this afternoon, independent sources are acknowledging a new fact: A computer made with IBM Cell and AMD Opteron processors can process a thousand trillion operations per second.
This afternoon, the itinerary of the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden was officially altered to make way for a special panel, acknowledging what the US Department of Energy had announced a few hours earlier: Its Roadrunner supercomputer, built by IBM as a unique hybrid of Cell BE and AMD Opteron processors, has recorded an official throughput speed above one quadrillion floating point operations per second -- one petaflop.
At the DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico, there's a supercomputer called Roadrunner built using 12,960 of IBM's specially modified Cell eDP processors -- using the same basic architecture as the chip at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 3 -- coupled with 6,912 AMD Opteron processors. The International Supercomputing Conference reported this afternoon that Roadrunner posted a peak performance score, using the Linpack benchmark, of 1.026 petaflops per second, in a test conducted last month.
In a rare preview of the University of Mannheim's twice-annual TOP500 list, the ISC's Prof. Hans Meuer announced Roadrunner would indeed surpass the long-standing IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer, hosted at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, when it publishes its June list next week.
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| The Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratories, the first to break the petaflop processing barrier. [Courtesy IBM] |
"Twenty-two years ago, in 1986, the legendary Cray 2 passed the 1 gigaflop/s level, and in June of that year we held the first ISC," Prof. Meuer wrote. "Eleven years later, when the Intel ASCI Red system landed atop the ninth TOP500 list presented at the conference, this was the first time a system reached the teraflop/s level. And now RoadRunner has cracked the next magical barrier and will be number one on the 31st edition of the TOP500 list."
How much of a trouncing will this represent? In last November's list, using the U. of Mannheim's preferred Linpack benchmark, posted an Rmax score of 478,200 -- or just under 0.48 petaflops per second. Granted, BlueGene/L may have accelerated since then, but it had a long way to go.
If there is another supercomputer in the petaflop race that broke the petaflop barrier, its hosts apparently lost out to the DOE in the race to register that fact. So as it stands now, one of the big losers in the petaflop race could be Sun Microsystems. In June 2007, Sun set a goal for itself for a 1.7 petaflop computer, perhaps by next week's conference. Sun still has about a week to surge in front of IBM and LANL and seize that #1 slot on the TOP500 list. But the proverbial tape at the finish line is streaming today from Roadrunner; and at this point, its competition is starting to look like 499 coyotes left in the dust.
Hmm... I wish my computer was that fast.
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|Just curious, how many flops can a $1000 business laptop in 2008 do? Thanks in advance for anyone who can give a hint.
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|I bet you that Sony Corp will use this as propaganda to sell more Ps3's. Sadly the common fanboy and moron will not understand that the IBM Cell and the Sony Cell processors are different. As I would like to take some time to inform those who wish to use this as a Ps3 "fanboyism" propaganda.
Comparing you Ps3 to this computer is like comparing an Atari 2600 to this computer. Even if you a massed all the Ps3's in the world you wouldn't even come near to this computer. So before Ps3 fanboys speak about this think about us the real computer science experts when we say: "your game system is rubbish compared to this super computer."
in closing please spare us your game system flaming and a** kissing.
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|:( great.
the nsa, cia, et.al. will need their little new supercomputer to be twice as fast next year if they are going to be able to monitor all the cell phones, gps's, landlines, emails, money transfers, bank accounts and credit card transaction that are transpired all over the world.
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|more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second
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|IBM was born in Endicott, NY, and left it a chemical dump. They moved out of Endicott for "greener pastures," and are fighting the cancer claims of the people who made it the great company it is today in addition to fighting the clean up.
IBM CAN GO TO HELL!
http://www.pressconnects...ticle?AID=2008806050347
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|They're a company, what else do you expect from a company? Don't forget they've done a lot of good too. Without them computers wouldn't be as advanced as they are now. This has helped most of our society and the world to advance.
http://www.sydesjokes.com/members/flash/ibm.swf
While I agree that was a d*** move on their part. I still support it because... well... I
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|Yeah - like helping Microsoft come to power :)
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|hell yeah
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|think they should take all the spare parts and build circuit city some new computers. Seriously walked in and their still using freakin digital green pos.
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|So when the test fails do they get the same Blue Screen of Death that I get?? lol
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|Hmm, I doupt it. For the Budget they probably have one with a Nice Background, a sound voice telling them
"I am sorry, I can not do that, Dave"
As it dispenses cookies.
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|that kind of computer needs a lot of support personnel
hire them through
http://www.CBCJobs.com
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|How about you stop advertising!
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|The DOE plans to use the computer for simulating how nuclear materials age and whether the aging nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States is safe and reliable. Other uses for the supercomputer include the sciences, financial, automotive and aerospace industries
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|I think it is interesting that we are making advances in computing. I am not that up to date with the world of super computing but what would we need this sort of computing power for? Is there anything we use today that needs this sort of speed and power? Perhaps if we built a star ship and had it commanded by a Frenchmen I could see the need for extreme computing needs, but what about now. Really, what would we use this for?
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|I do not remember the name, Probably Blue Gene, but a SuperCommputer in Japan is used to predict weather.
Others are used for chess, Cryptology, Physics... etc
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|Sweet!
A Computer which can finally Run Crysis with Full graphics enabled!
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|LOL, true. May need a few thousand 9800GX2 and maybe some modified Forceware drivers to support the massive SLI action.
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|EXCELLENT !!!
CONGRATS LANL / DoE !!!
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|Your parent's might want to file a patent case. Now relax please.
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|Yawn
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|But will it blend?
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|Is it the Department of Energy or the Department of Energy (and money) misuse?
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|We need that much computer power just because!
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