IBM Breaks Own Supercomputer Record
By David Worthington | Published March 24, 2005, 8:51 PM
IBM has one-upped itself. Big Blue has revealed that it has broken through the 100 teraflop mark and developed the world's fastest supercomputer for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The system is a derivative of IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer, which won the supercomputing crown back from NEC's Earth Simulator. The NNSA machine is used to simulate nuclear tests as part of an ongoing maintenance program for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
A LINPACK benchmark of 135.3 trillion floating point operations per second (teraflops) was achieved in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at the half-system point; meaning, there is more performance to come.
BlueGene/L burst onto the scene in October of 2004, achieving 36.01 teraflops and significantly reducing the energy consumption and profile of the supercomputer.
In comparison to today's technology, CRAY 1, the word's first supercomputer, reached a top speed of 133 megaflops. A megaflop is equivalent to one million instructions per second; a teraflop is equivalent to a trillion operations per second.
"BlueGene/L's latest accomplishment is an important step toward achieving the capabilities we need to succeed in our stockpile stewardship mission," said Michael Anastasio, Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "BlueGene/L allows us to address computationally taxing stockpile science issues at very low cost. Effective and relatively inexpensive supercomputers of this nature will open doors for scientists across the country."
The NNSA is using BlueGene to model tests that eliminate the need for actual nuclear testing.
Because of its low energy consumption and smaller size, IBM has begun a computing on demand program powered by BlueGene. The service targets commercial disciplines that have a growing demand for the performance of supercomputers, but cannot afford the high costs associated with ownership.
If IBM even considered using microsft windows on one of thier super computers.. Think about stuff before you post. YOu must enjoy the microsoft sucks argument. Most Supercomputers use variations of Unix Solaris Ect. Not windows windows was never designed to run on the number of CPU's that are contained in one of these machines...
Good God THINK A LITTLE BEFORE YOU POST
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|There is a version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 currently being developed for Supercomputers.
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|Super computers would be faster if it wasn't for Microsoft. If there are any problems with BlueGene/L that will be Microsofts fault as well, even though they have nothing to do with the project. Also, the US shouldn't even do computurized tests of nuclear weapons so someone should sue Microsoft over this.
My toilet broke yesterday too, this was probably due to a bug in Windows XP.
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|Your toilet would be OK if had downloaded the Service Pack and run Windows Update on it. (Yeah, right!)
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|Yeah and once you do fix it you will have to call and wait on hold for 45 min to be allowed to use it.
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|Ok, How about you guys stay on topic, and stop whining about how you all hate microsoft, I'm sure they managed to sell you there prouduct, so stop complaining about it, and stay on topic please!
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