Top Five Supercomputers of the World!
September 08, 2008 at 03:10:35 PM, by David Fried
Computer based power has grown leaps and bounds since the creation of the first computers in the mid 20th century.
Introduction
Computer based power has grown leaps and bounds since the creation of the first computers in the mid 20th century. Early computers were the size of a massive room and were electrical vampires that consumed as much power as a few hundred modern computers. But the power sucking personal computers of days of ole dont even compare to the modern day supercomputer in the area of power consumption. As modern day supercomputers are in essence thousands of souped up PCs that are daisy chained together for maximum power. Put on your thinking cap and get ready to be schooled about the top five most powerful supercomputers filled with tiny integrated circuits that allow for superhuman processing power.
Number 5:
Cray XT4 Jaguar
The Cray XT4 runs Linux and has an impressive speed of 205 teraflop/s by utilizing its AMD x86_64 Opteron Dual Core 2600 MHz processor. The unit is stored at DOEs Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is the primary system in the National Leadership Computing Facilitation. The system was installed in 2006 by Cray inc. and has 11,706 processor nodes. Each node has 4GB of memory and a 2.6 GHz Dual-core AMD Opteron processor, which enables the 205 teraflops/s of processing power. The installation has a bevy of available memory in the form of 600 TB of disk space available to be used in the lustre file system, which is only made better by the XT3 Internal Interconnect system that allows for very high bandwidth.
Number 4:
Sun SunBlade x6420 Ranger Cr
The Ranger system built in 2008 features a lightning quick 326 teraflop/s and is house at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas Austin. The unit runs on Linux and has a AMDx86_64 Opteron Quad Core 2000Mhz of processing power. Ranger has 125,952 GB of memory, which is helpful for the considerable amount of science research the computer is used for. The unit has already provided several unprecedented breakthroughs in the computational science and technology research realms.
Number 3:
IBM BlueGene/P
The BlueGene/P is very similar in setup to the BlueGene/L however, the P has four processor cores per chip compared to the Ls 2. The unit is quite the workhorse boasting 450.3 teraflop/s and is stored at the DOEs Argonne National Laboratory, but manages to keep their energy bills low (or at least lower, as they are running a giant supercomputer). The units operating system is CNK/SLES which is the exact same as the IBM BlueGene/L but, it has a more powerful processor sporting a PowerPC 450 with 850 MHz, which is helpful for the science based research that the unit is used for.
Well, what do you think the top 2 computers in the world (that we could find info on anyways...) will be? You know, this is really only relevant to TODAY, everyday there are advances in computing superpowers - and one might just topple this list in the next 20 minutes...but until then...see what we found on the next page! The Top 2 Supercomputes in the World
Number 2:
IBM BlueGene/L
The IBM BlueGene/L system built in 2005 pumps out 478 trillion calculations per second thus 478.2 teraflop/s and is used at DOEs Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The unit is based on IBMs POWER Architecture and is set up for optimized bandwidth, scalability, and handles massive amounts of data whilst using a minimal amount of electricity and floor space. The installation features lightweight OS per node, which reduces computational noise, 32,768 GB of memory and 106,496 nodes with each node featuring a large amount of memory. The units main usage is research in the form of science simulation for NNSAs tri-lab Advanced Simulation and Computing program, to ensure the protection and reliability of the nations nuclear deterrent without actual testing.
Number 1:
IBM Roadrunner
The IBM Roadrunner boasts a mind blowing 1.026 petaflop/s and is housed at U.S. Department of Energys Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Roadrunner likely named to correlate with the state bird of New Mexico, however its speed is comparable to Wile E. Coyotes arch nemesis. The IBM supercomputer is (in fact) so fast that it recently shattered every speed record due to the AMD opteron and Sony/IBM Cell based processors which are used in the PS3) which comprised the machines guts. Its performance speed of 1.026 petaflop/s garners it a spot as the most powerful computer to ever grace the earth. Surprisingly enough, the Roadrunner is one of the most efficient in terms of energy usage of the top 500 supercomputers in the world! Now that, deserves some clout to boast as well. Huh, who knew those funky cartoon animals pop outta server cages!
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Comments
AIK at 09:23, October 28, 2008
nice!