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IBM's Roadrunner set to smash supercomputing marks

Tom Warren   on 13 November 2007 - 09:07 · 8 comments & 6552 views

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IBM once again dominated the competition in semiannual rankings of supercomputers, but the big news is what's coming next year. Big Blue is working on a computer nicknamed "Roadrunner" that will combine Cell processors, a family of chips found inside the PlayStation 3, and processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Roadrunner, which will be delivered to the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in summer 2008, will be capable of performing more than a quadrillion operations, or a petaflop, when it's fully operational. IBM helped design and build the Cell chip and has been looking for ways to expand its commercial potential.

A computer that can churn a petaflop has been a longstanding goal for many manufacturers. IBM had the fastest computer on the Top500 Supercomputer Sites list, which was released Monday at the SC07 conference in Reno, Nev. The top machine, the Blue Gene/L supercomputer--located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory--is capable of 478.2 trillion operations, or 478.2 teraflops a second. Thus, Roadrunner will be twice as powerful.

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#1 RAID 0 on 13 Nov 2007 - 09:19
I'd like to run BOINC on that thing!

"No no, use my login name and password."
(2 replies) #2 Lare2 on 13 Nov 2007 - 09:31
My mom would love one to play solitaire on it
#2.1 GOJI_GKing2000 on 13 Nov 2007 - 09:39
pfft, forget solitaire, I'd take Minesweeper for a spin or five.
#2.2 Digix on 13 Nov 2007 - 10:10
Quote - (GOJI_GKing2000 said @ #2.1)
pfft, forget solitaire, I'd take Minesweeper for a spin or five.


Lol there would be like enough calculations going on the server would be able to calculate your movement before you make it and cheat
(1 reply) #3 Lasker on 13 Nov 2007 - 10:43
What about to play Crysis at full speed with the highest quality settings
#3.1 PureLegend on 13 Nov 2007 - 19:49
Impossible!
#4 frbubba on 13 Nov 2007 - 14:03
Now if they could miniturize it so I can have it on my PDA...
#5 lnxpro on 13 Nov 2007 - 22:06
just like most IBM servers. very FAST at calculations and processing power. very crappy on graphics.

cannot play games on it. unless like some posts said, play solitaire. hehe.

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