A second Blue Gene/L supercomputer has posted speed results that lift it to the high ranks of supercomputing

The system, called Blue Gene Watson and located at IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center, performed 91.3 trillion calculations per second, or 91.3 teraflops. That means it's second only to IBM's original Blue Gene/L system, the fastest supercomputer in the world, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and clocked at 135 teraflops.
The higher speed, measured with an algebraic calculation test called Linpack, puts IBM another notch ahead of Silicon Graphics, whose Columbia system at NASA reached 51.9 teraflops last fall.

Big Blue has a healthy lead in the list and expects to stay on top. The Livermore machine is in line for another doubling in size and, roughly, performance.

IBM sells the Blue Gene systems for about $2 million per rack each rack has 1,024 processors, and Blue Gene Watson has 20 racks. IBM also rents out access to the machines. Blue Gene Watson has been used for protein simulations that tie into biology and drug development research.

 

 

 

Reply

I've heard of the supercomputer before. But what is the actual point of it in this day and age? The government and businesses like IBM are corrupt to the core, so it is obvious that you nor I will ever have one. People that can afford a supercomputer will more than likely never get one. And generally it is another fail. However, the fact that it is the fastest and most powerfullest computer in the world (known) doesn't make a difference as it has 20 480 processors. If we could build something like that (say 20 480 3.6GHz Processors, 40 960 Blocks of 1Gb Ram and so on) then we would too have the most powerfullest computer. What they need to try and do is test out new ways of data (electronic switching) transfer. Maybe something as sophisticated as biometric chips or isometric chips.

We need to concentrate on making new things work, not putting hundreds (or thousands) of old bits together.

Reply