SCI/TECH: IBM Rolls out New Supercomputer

In keeping with its historical image IBM has once again taken a quantum leap forward in the computing industy by creating the worlds fastest and most powerful supercomputer. They did it right here in the USA!




I feel that this kind of news needs to be reported widely and loud because people have begun to loose their belief in American ingenuity and innovation. It is a Can do Spirit that has helped make this country great. I have friends who have helped to work on this project and I am very proud of their accomplishments and the way their achievements have added to the greatness of our nation. We are stilll a nation of innovators and inventors. What other nation in the world could produce the first private space flight and the biggest baddest supercomputer in the world in the same week!

[edit on 21-6-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

thats one mucking fassive computor,

i mean that is very fast ahem.........

it is good that companies are creating things like that but (and there is always a but), just imagine what this computor could do in the wrong hands, how intelegent would this computor be if "someone" could develope it for the wrong reasons.

You know when nobody is looking the janitor is hopping on that doing some serious gaming.

Gaming? Imaging the PORN capabilies!!!

500 videos and image galleries downloaded in a second.

*drool*

Whoa!!! Thats ooooooooone BIG calculator








"good guys are bad guys who never get caught"

The Blue Gene/L DD1 node is only the first of the possible and planned 16 nodes in the Blue Gene cluster.

Its rated at 11 Tflops as a single node, sizing 4 fridge sized boxes with 8000 PPC CPU's, putting it in the 4th spot of fastest super computers.

At first the project was planned to be an 8 node cluster with a goal to reach 100 Tflops in 1 go.

2 major innovations are made in this system, being the size, 8000 CPU's and 11 Tflops present in 4 fridge size cabinets, while 8000 CPU's used to take about the size of a tennis court.

Second innovation would be that the blue gene nodes can run seperatly, as Blue Gene I, II, III and so on, and with limited physical labour be put together as 1 big super cluster.

The 16 node system is supposed to become a 180+ Tflops machine, outperforming every other system by miles.

The new Blue Gene/L DD2 with never type CPU's that only count 4000 per box has also entered the top 10 at spot number 8 with 8.6 Tflops, but has a Max of also 11 Tflops.

Currently the fastest super computer around is the Earth Simulator in Japan with 5120 CPU's built by NEC, rated at 35.8 Tflops.

Blue Gene should be able to smash this megacluster from the 1st spot once its other nodes are ready.

The magic about the Earth Simulator is that its been in existence since 2002.

Alot of people are speculating these days that Google might hold the record of fastest supercomputer though. Its starting to become quite mythical what systems and how much of them google has. Some think its a network of up to 100000 machines working in harmony, others say, in light of what a supercomputer is, it should also be classified as 1 supercomputer with immense power.



[edit on 22-6-2004 by thematrix]

That is some "big iron" they are picking up! Talk about scalability...
The power of so many CPUs harnessed to a single task is just staggering. The aged SETI@Home distributed processing project is using over five million home PCs, running part-time, to garner a whopping 33.14 TeraFLOPs/sec. To have that kind of computational power in the room with you would be an alomst religious experience! I am interested in the practical aspects of these monter machine, like how they keep them cool.

SETI@Home current computational statistics

Didn't they say they keep them in Fridges

Originally posted by Spectre
That is some "big iron" they are picking up! Talk about scalability...
The power of so many CPUs harnessed to a single task is just staggering. The aged SETI@Home distributed processing project is using over five million home PCs, running part-time, to garner a whopping 33.14 TeraFLOPs/sec. To have that kind of computational power in the room with you would be an alomst religious experience! I am interested in the practical aspects of these monter machine, like how they keep them cool.

SETI@Home current computational statistics

Conventionaly superclusters are kept cool with room and per cabinet airco. Some also make use of per CPU Peltiers and such, but this is an unreliable method since peltiers have the anoying byproduct of causing condensation.

The Blue Gene system on the other hand is supposed to be way easyer to cool, and doesn't even require much airco power per cabinet. IBM has an info site on the system, but most of the more detailed and on hands info can be found at sites like top500.com and other super computer related sites.

Having Multi Tflop power to use has all kinds of uses really, like the earth simulator that runs 1 single massive app, to other kinds and a wide variety of simulations run on university run Tflop machines.

Alot of the most powerfull superclusters are unlisted though, goverment run, for "other kinds" of simulations and research.

Just try to imagine what kind of power a system like echelon would need to give it the juice to do even a fraction of what its supposed to do.

Well, thats a great achievement. I would like to see it reach the number 1 spot. What I would do with it is run Seti@home and find out if there are any kind of intellegent signals out there.

Wonder how many more years untill this news title reads.. "New Super computer cuts 20000 jobs at IBM". "Computer determines robots are 100% more efficient and do not require pay".. News at 11:00.

Surprised they can make anything considering the way they treat their employees. I was #..6254 in their system, 6 issued Patents, 6 pending and the losers threatened to fire me if I went to my own fathers funeral so I quit. IBM is trash, makes trash, will always be trash.

makes you wonder how long it will be until DNA and Quantum computers are able to replace these limited silicon-based cpu's...

Just think what kind of AI could be developed. I want to get one for my room so bad just think no more Ctrl, Alt, Delete!!!!!

tut , i thought it was going to be an xbox 2 post

Originally posted by GrndLkNatv
Surprised they can make anything considering the way they treat their employees. I was #..6254 in their system, 6 issued Patents, 6 pending and the losers threatened to fire me if I went to my own fathers funeral so I quit. IBM trash, makes trash, will always be trash.

Corporations like nations are defined by the people who work for them and lead them. I do not mean to dimish the injustice of your experience as you have relayed it but it is at most a reflection of one middle management team. I have good friends who are management in the Rochester IBM facility and they are grade A top quality human beings. I am proud of the work they do and the people who work for them are proud of their association. THis is not to say that a corporate giant like IBM is without its major character flaws. I simply mean to suggest that to villify the entire company and its management is to demean without cause many good hard working honest and caring people.

Save your money. In 7 years, that will be available in a cheap laptop.

www.onealclan.com

What in the world would you do with that much processing power? Run a 10,000 player Battlefield 1942 server? Want to ruin that machine? Install Windows XP and watch it run 10% faster than the fastest p4 on the market.

We do need good AI software. Stuff able to generate its own code. Imagine the possibilities of a software program that was able to program itself and correct code errors and make itself more efficient.

Save your money. In 7 years, that will be available in a cheap laptop.

Yeah, that'd be the IBM-manufactured G6 processor for the Apple G6 Powerbook, made of adamandium, with an high-resolution holographic 3D display. Saw that in my expresso this morning...

Unfortunately, millions of PD users will be stuck with slow and crappy Intel Pentium 5 plastic laptops while they will be told by the guy at CompUSA that it's the fastest computers in the world! The world never changes... only tech does!