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IBM Readies Monster Supercomputer

pcworld.com — The powerful supercomputer will perform at speeds 20 times faster than the runner-up, also from IBM.

Who dugg this? Made popular Feb 10, 2009

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  • Tiak, on 02/09/2009, -0/+48"20 petaflops per second"
    Seriously people, twenty quadrillion floating point operations per second per second, apparently it's so fast they measure its performance in terms of acceleration rather than speed.
  • aghati, on 02/10/2009, -1/+29●████▅▅██████...█..█████████===███
    ▅█ I.B.M. Monster ███▅▄▃▂
    ███████████████████►
    ◥☼▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲☼◤
  • connieLingus, on 02/10/2009, -3/+27i've been following supercomputer news for 30 years now, and in that time every-friggin-one of them *supposedly*...

    1. simulates nuclear blasts
    2. forecasts weather
    3. simulates financial markets
    4. simulates chemical reactions.

    how many nuclear blasts really need to be simulated?

    ...can't they just say that they are using them to break encryption schemes, and be done with it already?
  • imasuperDOTcom, on 02/10/2009, -1/+221.21 JIGAWATTS!

    RUN FOR IT MARTY!
  • spriggig, on 02/10/2009, -0/+20Coming to a desktop near you in twenty years.
  • inactive, on 02/10/2009, -1/+19Announcement.
    For stupid peoples mesurement units (SPMU) computer power is now measured in "laptops" which will be added to the ever popular distance units of the "football field" and "human hair"

    is that asus EEEPCs or quad core Eurocoms?
  • inactive, on 02/10/2009, -1/+18I like people who come up with this idea.

    "Let's build the biggest ***** monster supercomputer in the world!"

    "But, sir, we already have the world fastest 1.059 petaflop supercomputer, can't it already do the job?"

    "Not enough, make it a 20 petaflops ***** monster *****!"
  • immatellyouwhat, on 02/10/2009, -1/+15Skynet is calling...
  • inactive, on 02/10/2009, -0/+13How does this compare with The Grid attached to the LHC?
  • Tiak, on 02/09/2009, -0/+13o.O
    He has made 2,042 comments, you have made 7. WTF?
  • bigteebo, on 02/10/2009, -0/+11This new computer has SEVEN blades.
  • ThatGeek, on 02/10/2009, -0/+10When does it become self aware?
  • immatellyouwhat, on 02/10/2009, -0/+8●████▅▅██████...█..█████████===███Come with me if you want to pew pew
    ▅█ John Conner ███▅▄▃▂
    ███████████████████►
    ◥☼▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲☼◤
  • Jojii, on 02/10/2009, -0/+8This article's target audience is people 6 years old. Articles that are written down to audiences make me want to cry.
  • Zippo, on 02/09/2009, -4/+12Must be a bitter pill to swallow for all those people who IBM laid off... I imagine more than a couple of them had their share in this.
    "Thanks for helping us build our monster supercomputer. As a reward, you're fired... but you can have a job in India!"
  • jeremymccurdy, on 02/10/2009, -0/+8It'd be pretty awesome if Folding@Home got a hold of something with that kind of power, it'd speed things up quite a bit.
  • GoldEdition, on 02/08/2009, -7/+14Must try running Crysis on it...
  • ryan83189, on 02/10/2009, -0/+7●████▅▅██████...█..█████████===███
    ▅█ Monster Tanks ███▅▄▃▂
    ███████████████████►
    ◥☼▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲☼◤
    Kid's seats still just fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!
  • Tyrghast, on 02/10/2009, -1/+8Why? Because we can.

    And for ultra-porn.
  • jasdf, on 02/10/2009, -1/+7I will answer your question for you. Yes, Crysis could run at full quality on a ultra high resolution screen at multiple hundreds of frame per second with that kind of power.
  • clichecow, on 02/10/2009, -0/+6There is plenty of research that will be benefited by a faster supercomputer, its not like they're just doing it for the hell of it.
  • LordBacon, on 02/10/2009, -0/+6In Terminator 4.
  • housemaster49, on 02/10/2009, -0/+5Aww, I thought this was gonna be next:

    http://helmer3.sfe.se/
  • LordBacon, on 02/10/2009, -0/+5mmm.. Good question !
  • CATSCEO2, on 02/10/2009, -0/+5●████▅▅▄▄▄▄▄▄... ..▄▄▄ {¦---(¦====¦>
    ▄▄▅█ Porno Tank █▅▄▃▂
    ██████████████►
    ◥☼▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲☼◤
  • Akaricloud, on 02/10/2009, -0/+5If the government was using them to break encryptions why would they advertise about it? Surely if they were contracting IBM to build their supercomputers for such an illicit thing they'd slap them with a gag order or a non diclosure form so we wouldn't even know.

    You say you have been following this for 30 years now. In the pasat 30 years I'm sure that the Russians, Chinese and South Asian nuclear powers (India, Pakistan) have all modified their nuclear arsenals and have designed continually different nuclear weapons. So too over the past 30 years I am sure that different software has been developed for the actual simulations to run on, making them more and more accurate. The more efficient and powerful the super computers over the years are becoming, so too the more accurate the results are going to become. I'm not sure about you but I'd be a little pissed if the governments only testing on what a nuclear war would cause the planet was a simulation they did back in 1980 on a supercomputer which is less powerful then the laptop I'm typing on right now.
  • zaferk, on 02/10/2009, -1/+6These are for Americans only really, the rest of the worlds got metric covered.
  • Defiant001, on 02/10/2009, -0/+4I was thinking the same thing, what a lame way of measuring the power of this super computer.

    SPMU shall now be added to my list of noob units along with id10t errors and "UBS" cords
  • matthobbs05, on 02/10/2009, -0/+4Neither :)
  • grantmoore3d, on 02/10/2009, -0/+4That's TB of memory, not storage
  • cowboy86, on 02/10/2009, -3/+7Crysis must try running it.
  • inactive, on 02/10/2009, -1/+5OVER 8000


    The question is, do you digg for the "hilarious" meme, or do you bury because I got the number wrong?
  • noupsell, on 02/09/2009, -2/+6Colossus: We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom, freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for human pride as to be dominated by others of your species. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/
  • matthobbs05, on 02/10/2009, -0/+3Like playing Solitaire?
  • badave, on 02/10/2009, -0/+3It only has 1.6 TB? I have 1.6 TB....
  • immatellyouwhat, on 02/10/2009, -1/+4Stop smokin the pot Phelps
  • Lazn0r, on 02/10/2009, -0/+3IBM Employee here, I have no idea how we built this...All the people I deal with are thick as planks...And I'm only in the mailroom...
  • bitmanx, on 02/10/2009, -1/+4It's going to be used to simulate US layoff's and how many more jobs can be sent offshore..
  • nikayla, on 02/10/2009, -0/+3Well if you look at the Top500 list, they are competing with Cray, Sun, and SGI.
  • Flamesack112, on 02/10/2009, -0/+3I can't even imagine how much ***** that computer could do. At twenty petaflops it could fold protein to the equivalent of twenty times the entire Folding@Home project. This is the kind of stuff Harvard could use.
    I foresee the US government using to predict missile trajectories, explosions, mainframe collapses, data trends, encryption, and even remote operations.
  • HurtlingBetsy, on 02/10/2009, -1/+3yeah but it still can't beat me in chess...
  • BlackCow, on 02/10/2009, -1/+3RTFA, its going to run Linux :-)

    I wonder what flavor of Linux they are going to run on that beast.
  • da233, on 02/10/2009, -1/+3There's no such thing as full fps.
  • YanMan, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2The 1.6TB of memory number has to be wrong. With 1.6 million CPUs, that works out to just one MB per CPU. It is probably supposed to be 1.6 PB or something.

    Anyway, IBM largest Power 595 supports 4 TB of memory, and it's a commercially available computer. They have been doing terabytes of RAM for years.
  • drex8, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2Who is IBM competing with in the SuperComputing field? Hitachi gave up long time ago, and Cray is almost like an afterthought now. It's almost like they're competing with themself now. Not a bad thing though, because these monster supercomputers runs monster applications like weather forecasting and astronomical calculations.
  • Defiant001, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2Dugg for folding@home
  • Disgod, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2Holy crap it skips Super-porn and goes straight to ultra-porn!!! That's like going to plaid!!!
  • inactive, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2MICROSOFT.

    Just kidding.
  • Defiant001, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2I have 4 TB, on just one of my computers...

    It was talking about RAM though, not hard drive storage.
  • sangjmoon, on 02/10/2009, -0/+2It was just around 20 years ago when IBM almost went under. But it made the hard choices and walked through the fire with no government bailout and it became all the stronger for it as their performance relative to its competitors during this downturn has shown. Take our auto industry as a contrast, they've been coddled with quotas and tariffs against foreign competitors, subsidies, and anti-competitive laws, and they have ended up weaker than any other auto competitor. It should make you wonder if the current bailouts and "stimulus" package will actually help us or make us weaker in the long run.
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