Although IBM's Blue Gene/L system remains incomplete, it was
recently named the fastest supercomputer in the world by the Top500
project, clocking in at an amazing 70.72 trillion calculations a
second. The Blue Gene/L system unseated Japan's Earth Simulator
as the supercomputing leader of the Top500 project rankings, compiled
by an independent group of university scientists every six months,
by virtually doubling the number of calculations it generated (70.72
trillion) per second over the runner-up.
IBM officials were happy with the honor, but even more thrilled
their new supercomputer consumes about $1 million annually in electricity,
a bargain compared to Japan's Earth Simulator that experts
say would cost some $60 million a year to generate the same amount
of calculations per second.
The IBM system is about as big as a medium-size home (2,500 square
feet) compared to the Earth Simulator clocking in at 34,000 square
feet.
Another domestic supercomputer, based at NASA's Ames Research
Center, snagged the second spot on the Top500 project list with
51.87 trillion calculations per second.
Costing a combined $150 million, the Blue Gene/L system and the
NASA supercomputer were also far less costly than the Earth Simulator's
$250 million price tag and use processors very similar to ones that
are commercially available.
USA
Today November 8, 2004
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