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Supercomputers are great, in fact even the name is great: conjuring images of CPUs in red capes flying to the help of damsels in distress.  However, in the real world they are hundreds of cabinets stuffed full of computer stuff and do in fact look incredibly dull.  The opposite can be said of what they actually do as they push the boundaries of what is capable using solely 0s and 1s to solve complex calculations, help define new theorem, and play Crysis on full graphics.

Yet, as with everything in this world, it has become a competition to have the fastest computer and this has been going on since computers began; in fact, even Romans competed over abacus skills.  In June, the Roadrunner which was built by IBM, became the fastest computer ever achieving a sustained speed of 1.026 petaflops.  FLOPS actually stands for FLoating point Operations Per Second, so 1.026 petaflops is 1 026 000 000 000 000 floating point operations per second which, in every sense, is a lot.

However there could be a new leader on the Top 500 list which is compiled by computer experts and is to be updated this week in a supercomputing conference in Austin.  This is Cray’s Jaguar XT, which claims to have reached 1.64 petaflops, a massive increase on its probable predecessor and is set to gain this prestigious honor.  It runs Linux and has a massive 362TB of memory which is spread out over its 284 cabinets, each of which holding 192 quad-core AMD Opteron chips.

This is a result of a $100 million upgrade, and it now takes up 5,700 square feet and if you add the interconnecting wires together you get an astonishing 6 000 miles.  This is one big mean computing machine.This may seem pointless, but discoveries made in this highly advanced field often trickle down to home computers, meaning you can always expect quicker computers.  However is it really worth hundreds of millions of dollars?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Source [TheInquirer]