HECToR, Europe's biggest supercomputer

uk.reuters.com...

A supercomputer that could help answer some of science's biggest questions will be unveiled on Monday.

With the power of 12,000 desktop PCs, the mammoth machine called HECToR is the country's fastest computer and one of the most powerful in Europe.

It can make 63 million calculations each second, allowing scientists to conduct research into everything from climate change to new medicines.

i am all for the progression of technology, and it's amazing to think about what a supercomputer is today, vs 50 years ago. Or even that we had supercomputers 50 years ago!

Still, makes me think that Skynet is only a few steps away.

If they're looking for the answer to everything, then they should watch Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy, the answer is 42 lol!

On a more serious note though, it does make me wonder what exactly they are planning to do with that much power.

It can be used for almost anything, the possibilities are endless. I'm excited, because these can lead to important findings, especially doing large scale simulations. I imagine that's probably the biggest intended use, simulating weather, populations, wars, economies, whatever.

reply to post by scientist


I am all for this awesome technology - increasing our knowledge and planning and manufacturing. My only issue is with the climate change or ocean current applications - the results are only as good as the data we plug in. The current simulations have such wide ranges, like for temperature increase in the next 100 years (1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius or for us Fahrenheit guys 3.24 to 10.44 if my math is right). Heck, the weather channel runs about 50 models of weather, takes the average and reports it to us...and yet they get it wrong more than right (when more than 40 hours out).
But still, awesome tech and great applications.

I think Reuters got the numbers wrong. According to the Hector website, it's peak performance is 60Tflops, which is 60 trillion floating point operations per second.

www.hector.ac.uk...
en.wikipedia.org...

It's in the Top 500, but, it's not at the top, yet.

Originally posted by scientist

Still, makes me think that Skynet is only a few steps away.

My belief is that Skynet will be possible. Though unlike in the Terminator movies, the real-life equivalent of it won't become 'self-aware' and start killing people.

Hey, didn't somebody on here start a topic involving a computer chip being built using DNA or something?

Just imagine in the future, we may have this power at our home computers.