Researchers Show Supercomputer Projects
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They help predict the path of weather halfway around the world or in space, shed light on the death of dinosaurs and train pilots to fly in Alaska. They're supercomputers, capable of high-speed calculations that would take people trillions of years to do.
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The builders of a new NASA supercomputer claim the 10,240-processor machine is the fastest in the world &#151; an exciting prospect for researchers even if the speed title has yet to be officially bestowed.
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A supercomputer being built by IBM for the US Department of Energy (DOE) has topped a list of the world&#39;s fastest computers. The Blue Gene/L beta-system can perform 70,720 billion calculations per second, which
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Ever since computer giant IBM announced earlier this week that they had developed the world&#39;s fastest computer, the whole nation seems to be abuzz about supercomputers.
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Virginia Tech's recently rebuilt Macintosh supercomputer flies past the 12-teraflop mark, but will the performance boost be enough to keep it in the supercomputer top 10? By Leander Kahney.
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SGI's supercomputer sets a public record which has been eclipsed by a faster result yet to be announced.
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IBM and several of the world&#39;s leading scientific and philanthropic groups this week launched a project that would put millions of PCs to work on research problems ranging from Alzheimer&#39;s to disaster forecasting.
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Silicon Graphics Inc and Nasa can claim to have created the world&#39;s most powerful supercomputer with the installation of the new Linux and Intel Corp Itanium 2-based &#39;Columbia&#39; supercomputer.
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One nanotechnology researcher said supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away."If things continue to go the way they have been in the past few decades, then it's 10 years," said Michael Zaiser, a professor and researcher at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering and Electronics. "The human brain is very good at working on microprocessor problems, so I think we are close -- 10 years, maybe 15."Zaiser's research into nanowires should help move that timeline along.For the last five years, he has been studying how tiny wires -- 1,000 times thinner than a human hair -- behave when manipulated. He explained that each such miniscule wire tends to behave differently when put under the same amount of pressure. Therefore, it has been impossible to line them up close to each other in tiny microprocessors in a production atmosphere.Zaiser said he's now figured out how to make the wires behave uniformly. He separates the interior material of the wire into distinct groups so the wire can't react as a whole. That makes it much easier to control. "It's like crowd control," he added. "If they can all go one way, you have a big mess."These nanowires will go inside microprocessors that could, in turn, go inside PCs, laptops, cell phones, or even supercomputers. And the smaller the wires, the smaller the chip can be.Shrinking down the microprocessors is a big step toward shrinking down computers.Zaiser was quick to point out that his nanowire discovery won't immediately lead to the development of supercomputers that can fit in the palm of a hand or even shrink down to the size of a book of matches. In addition to smaller microprocessors, engineers will need to deal with thermal fluctuations that erupt at that size.But he does humbly admit that taming nanowires is a big step toward the goal of small supercomputers."This will enable chips to become much smaller," he said. "Think 10 years back. You could hold [a cell phone] the size of a telephone receiver and it didn't work so well. Today, you can fit what is a powerful computer onto a small device."Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif., said that with advances like nanowire technology continuing to come along, Zaiser's predictions for tiny supercomputers may not be so far off. And that will be a huge step for the industry, considering that not so long ago supercomputers filled up enormous rooms or even entire buildings."Actually, what he's saying is not crazy," said King. "The wire problem was an important one. Solving that particular issue, one so fundamental, needed to be done. If he can solve that, a lot of people, a lot of companies, will appreciate that. The industry is aligning in a direction where we're going to be seeing continuing improvements and developments."Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz., said he definitely can see palm-size supercomputers coming out within 10 to 15 years, but he thinks they'll be based on the basic silicon technology used today. He added that the next generation of tiny supercomputers -- made with carbon nanotubes and nanowires -- may be as far off as another 30 to 40 years, though."You know, everybody says we'll get to a physical limit but every time we think we're going to hit it, we overcome it," said McGregor. "They end up being speed bumps instead of road blocks."King added that over the last 10 or 20 years, technology advancements have put smaller and more powerful computers into the hands of children and researchers alike. That leads him to believe that the shrinking of supercomputers is just ahead of us."We're at the beginning of some very exciting times in supercomputing," he said.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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IBM said in a press release that it is working with many national lab and universities to develop Blue Gene supercomputer applications in areas such as life sciences, hydrodynamics, quantum
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MOFFETT FIELD, Calif.--Even as Silicon Graphics trumpeted on Tuesday a new speed record with its Columbia supercomputer built for NASA, CNET News.
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A $US100 million ($A130 million) supercomputer being built to analyse the US nuclear stockpile has again set an unofficial performance record - the second in just over a month.
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European research institutes are  linking together four supercomputers to create the world's  fourth most powerful megacomputer, without having to spend the  money it would normally cost to build such a monster.
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NEW YORK, September 29  - International Business Machines Corporation (IBM.NYS) has claimed to have developed the world&#39;s fastest supercomputer.
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The Earth Simulator, an NEC supercomputer, is surpassed, at last. IBM announced yesterday that its Blue Gene/L supercomputer had achieved a sustained performance of 36.
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Computer users are being asked to donate their unused processor power to help solve social and environmental research problems. The IBM-backed project, called World Community Grid, aims to put the untapped
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Lower electrical power consumption, not just greater data processing oomph, will help a new class of desktop supercomputers unveiled on Monday turn conventional industry logic on its head, its designers say.