Gallery: Roadrunner: World's fastest supercomputer
by Andy Smith | June 18, 2008 8:13am PDT | Image 1 of 11
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Roadrunner
IBM once again tops the Supercomputer 500 list but this time it's with Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to be able to process 1 petaflop or 1 quadrillion calculations per second. Roadrunner connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips as well as 12,240 Cell chips and runs on open-source Linux software from Red Hat.
Roadrunner resides at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory where its primary task will be to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S's nuclear weapons stockpile.
For more on the world's fastest supercomputers, read Larry Dignan's blog.
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Remember just how quickly the supercomputer power of a few years back was repackaged into desktop computers. How long to have a petaflop desktop?
And it still won't run flight sim fast enough!!
And it still won't run flight sim fast enough!!
Well if you install Linux, you'll be halfway there already.
The operating system that makes all this hardware work at petaflop speeds is Linux and Free Open Source Software.
The operating system that makes all this hardware work at petaflop speeds is Linux and Free Open Source Software.
That's about like saying that th4e right bridle in a horse's mouth will the Kentucky Derby. Linux is great, but I doubt it's the key to 10^15 floating point operations per second.
I'm thoroughly impressed by the Hardware community. Now let's hear from the software side. Can you develop an intelligence based system to utilize this number of processors simultaneously to solve problems?
This is just Sony/IBM's way of proving the PS3 doesn't suck. Hook 13,000 of them together and you get the world's fastest computer. XD
My only question on another of the articles dealing with Road Runner was about the software platform it might use, and I certainly never imagined it might be Linux (I did mentioned it, but actually discarded it in favor of AIX), these are refreshing news for Linux enthusiasts! The fastest Super Computer in the world... Runs Linux!
Why would they need such a potent machine for that task ? What are they really using it for ?
It should be put to better use on something like national defence.
It should be put to better use on something like national defence.
Almost like the movie "I-ROBOT".. its all 3d fun & wireless-gadget games untill supercomputers 20XX get tired of puting up with STUFF and decide to raise like black slaves in the AMISTAD. i say we take them all apart & recicle everything into crop working tools for working the land and we move into purification of the soil and climate we live in. we become more enviro-aware & GREEN. we need to focus into that rather than into temporary solutions to the fact we're almost at the point of no return. we humans ARE the solution to our own label as VIRUS to this planet, on the right state of mind. i dunno, i just wonder sometimes.
Sure it runs Linux, but I bet the techs at Los Alamos struggle to install a simple application package at the command line. No wonder they need a petaflop of power. At least its making a better future by calculating down to about 90 numbers to the right of the decimal point of nuclear decay. I will sleep so much better tonight.
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