SGI powers up Blacklight supercomputer

SGI has unveiled a supercomputer called Blacklight at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Blacklight is a mammoth $2.8 million machine built by SGI for the center. The system comes in two halves, each with 16 terabytes of shared memory. Either half would be the largest such amount of memory so far built, the center said, and with a little more programming effort, the two halves can communicate to work together.

The center announced on Monday that the system is now in operation, and is being used for research into language processing, software security, molecular biology, genetics, fluid dynamics, the physics of the early universe and seismology. A shared-memory design means that each processor has direct access to the entire memory, a feature that eases programming as data does not have to be requested indirectly from other processors.

For more on this story, read SGI's old-school supercomputer now revved up on CNET News.