Researchers build 'desktop supercomputer'
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(InfoWorld) - What if your desktop computer could run 100 times faster than a PC and were simple enough for a high school student to program? That's not an idle question. Researchers at the University of Maryland have built a prototype of a "desktop supercomputer" that can do just that. The new computer is at least three years from reaching commercial markets, but it could have a big effect in industries that process large loads of data. They include the pharmaceutical, aerospace, military and entertainment industries, for applications such as drug modeling, computer-aided design, and digital content creation. The Explicit Multi-Threading (XMT) computer combines the decades-old philosophy of using parallel computing algorithms with the huge number of transistors in modern processors. The machine uses three field-programmable gate array chips from Xilinx to represent a network of 64 ARM processors that control dozens of threads of simultaneous computation, says Uzi Vishkin, a professor at theÂ A. James Clark School of EngineeringÂ who built the machine with his graduate students. The team is now trying to shrink the prototype, a license-plate-size board running at 75 MHz, down to a fingernail-size version running between 1GHz and 2GHz. Team members took the first step toward that goal this summer by commissioning IBM to manufacture a CMOS silicon application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) with an on-chip data interconnect network. The venture is funded with a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, Vishkin says. A kid could do it Even if they succeed in building a smaller version of the prototype, the researchers will face the challenge of teaching programmers how to write software for a multithreaded system. Many commercial software companies are already puzzling over a similar problem today as they try to adapt to the latest dual- and quad-core processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. However, Vishkin says his system will be easier to program than applications for commercial multicore chips because the XMT algorithms appear to the operating system to be a single thread. "If you build it in a way that people cannot program it, it remains in the ivory tower of theory," he says. To prove his point, before the end of this year, Vishkin is planning to teach a class of high school students how to program the XMT using a version of the C programming language. He will teach college students to program the prototype in the first quarter of 2008. User wish list A desktop supercomputer would be a godsend for students and artists who rely on computers to process huge amounts of data in the creation of high-resolution digital pictures and movies, says Jon Stiles, director of campus technology at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver. "That would absolutely revolutionize our animation department," Stiles says, adding that currently, students at the college often have to wait for nine or 10 hours while their PCs process the data in a new design. "We're constantly looking for ways to eliminate bottlenecks in production," he says. Stiles warns, however, that a parallel supercomputer would have to meet three conditions before the college could use it. It would have to offer vast data storage, be capable of running standard commercial software such as Adobe Systems' Creative Suite 3 and consume the same amount of energy as current computers. If those conditions were met, Stiles says, "my campus IT support manager would do back flips." Energy use shouldn't be a problem, says Vishkin. "Based on back-of-the-envelope calculations, we believe that each cluster we have will consume not much more power than a standard core," he says. "So we will be competitive on power draw with the same generation of multicore chips."
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Shared research produces fast, tiny memory ideal for consumer devices.
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A forthcoming version of Windows Server is designed for building supercomputers from clusters of PCs.
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If you need a supercomputer on your desktop, Orion Multisystems has a machine for you. Aiming at scientists and engineers who need to do serious data crunching, the Santa Clara start-up will
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The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is getting ready to do some serious number crunching at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The NNSA recently selected IBM to construct the world's first supercomputer using Cell Broadband Engine (B.E.) processors that can perform a mind-boggling 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop.
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For three years running, the fastest supercomputer had been NEC&#39;s Earth Simulator in Japan. That was seen as a big challenge for the US computer industry.
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There is something rather antiquated about many of the server clusters used today by engineers, scientists and media fiends. Their high-powered computing machines are often cobbled together over many days
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Gateway released the specifications this week for a retail desktop PC based on a new motherboard design that should help cool high-end processors and graphics cards.
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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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Game-friendly desktop PC uses fans and a wind tunnel to bring down the temperature and the noise.
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Blog: The graphics chipmaker has a new lineup of chips that can be plugged into servers or workstations to boost the performance of scientific computing applications.
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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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Much of the technology being showcased at this week's SC2004 supercomputing conference could eventually make its way into corporate IT data centers, say supercomputing backers.
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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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Intel and Motion Computing design a tablet-like PC specifically for medical professionals.
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IBM's Cell processor will power the next great supercomputer, commissioned by the US Dept. of Energy, but it will share the stage with AMD Opteron processors. The result will be the world's fastest computer ever built, reaching 1.6 trillion calculations per second.
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AUGUST 30, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - A new company thinks it has the answer for scientists and engineers looking for high-performance computing on the desktop.