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cworley submitted - several times - this well-linked submission about a slightly boring topic - fast computers. "Top500.org has just released its latest list of the world's fastest supercomputers (updated twice yearly). For the first time, Linux Beowulf clusters have joined the teraFLOP club, with six new clusters breaking the teraFLOP barrier. Two Linux clusters now rank in the Top 10: Lawrence Livermore's "MCR" (built by Linux NetworX ) ranks #5 achieving 5.694 teraFLOP/s, and Forecast Systems Laboratory's "Jet" (built by HPTi) ranks #8 reaching 3.337 TeraFLOP/s. Other Linux clusters surpassing the teraFLOP/s barrier include: LSU's "SuperMike" at #17 (from Atipa ), the University at Buffalo at #22 and Sandia National Lab at #32 (both from Dell ), an Itanium cluster for British Petroleum Houston at #42 (from HP ), and Argonne National Labs at #46 (from Linux NetworX ) reached just over the one teraFLOP/s mark with 361 processors. In the previous Top500 list compiled last June, the fastest Intel based Netfinity 1024 processor clusters from IBM were sub-teraFLOP/s and the University of Heidelberg's AMD based "HELICS" cluster (built by Megware ) held the top tux rank at #35 with 825 GFLOP/s."

Greg Lindahl sent in this story last September about a massive Alpha Linux cluster that's being built by HPTi for the NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratories. What Greg forgot to mention when he submitted the original story is that he's the project's chief designer. What with all the Beowulf (and Alpha) interest around here, we figured he'd make a great interview guest, especially now that the project is well under way. Please post your questions below. Answers to 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated ones should appear within the next week.

buzzcutbuddha writes "Linux PR has a press release about a new weather forecasting supercomputer running Linux built by High Performance Technologies, Inc. that will be unveiled on Wednesday by NOAA. There is even a phone number to call to tour the High Performance Computer Center. " (let's see if the trolls can be clever for a change ;) Anyhoo 276 nodes, but its costed $15M? Them must be some spendy nodes...

Greg Lindahl writes "The Forecast Systems Laboratory, a divison of NOAA, selected HPTi, a Linux cluster integrator, to provide a $15 million supercomputing system during the next 5 years. The computational core of this system is a cluster of Compaq Alphas running Linux, using Myrinet interconnect. Check outwww.hpti.com for information on the company. "