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$24.5 Million Linux Supercomputer

An anonymous reader wrote in to say "Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US DOE) signed a $24.5 million dollar contract with HP for a Linux supercomputer. This will be one of the top ten fastest computers in the world. Some cool features: 8.3 Trillion Floating Point Operations per Second, 1.8 Terabytes of RAM, 170 Terabytes of disk, (including a 53 TB SAN), and 1400 Intel McKinley and Madison Processors. Nice quote: 'Today's announcement shows how HP has worked to help accelerate the shift from proprietary platforms to open architectures, which provide increased scalability, speed and functionality at a lower cost,' said Rich DeMillo, vice president and chief technology officer at HP. Read Details of the announcement here or here."

11 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... good thing they chose linux... by FortKnox · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... Cause if they put WinXP Pro on it, the project would cost:
    $24,500,399.98
    Which was juuust over budget!

    BTW - Can you put in code during the "post slashdot story" to automatically close the <I> tags? I don't think that would be too difficult to add...

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
    1. Re:Wow... good thing they chose linux... by mike_scheck · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not to mention, they would have 1368 wasted CPU's......

  2. Sigh... by buckeyeguy · · Score: 4, Funny

    all that capability and all I can think about is how much power the dang thing would consume... it'll take one big, big UPS/power conditioner.

    --
    I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
  3. Uhmm... by qurob · · Score: 5, Funny


    Scheduled to be fully operational in early 2003...


    Won't it be obsolete by then?

  4. Ahhhh... I see... by psxndc · · Score: 5, Funny
    So THIS is what we'll need to run PerlBox. :-)

    psxndc

    --

    The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.

  5. Wow - that is a big swap space! by gosand · · Score: 5, Funny
    1.8 Terabytes of RAM

    So does that mean it has 3.6 Terabytes of swap space?

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  6. Figures for the layman by popeyethesailor · · Score: 4, Funny

    1) 8.4 TFLOPS lets you find the sum of 4.2+4.2, 168 trillion times a second.
    2) 170 TB can hold 42.5 thousand times the contents of the entire Library of Congress books .(+ all the MP3s you downloaded )
    3) 1 TB of RAM may let you run as many as 13 Windows applications simultaneously.

    1. Re:Figures for the layman by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 5, Funny

      In other OTHER terms, on a machine like this, the lastest build of Mozilla is actually smooth and responsive.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  7. In Other News... by Komarosu · · Score: 5, Funny

    "8.3 Trillion Floating Point Operations per Second, 1.8 Terabytes of RAM, 170 Terabytes of disk, (including a 53 TB SAN), and 1400 Intel McKinley and Madison Processors."


    Microsoft finally release the baseline specifications for there next generation operating system...

    --

    "What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
  8. Re:1,800 intel processors? by Indras · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's see the story when they make one with 1,800 AMD processors!

    Palo Alto, CA: In the news today, 26 researchers, who had been constructing a new super computer for the government running on 1,800 AMD processors, were killed today when they fired up the machine for a test run. Apparently, they had forgotten to turn on the water pumps for the computer's cooling system before starting up the computer. Thousands of megawatts of electricity were instantly turned into heat energy, resulting in a contained explosion that vaporized all the researchers instantly, and turned the building into a pile of melted plastic, metal, and concrete.

    One local, who wishes to remain unknown, said when interviewed, "It was crazy! I mean, the whole building just melted. The heat waves coming out of the building were staggering, it was all I could do just to run into the nearest air-conditioned Starbucks and catch my breath."

    --
    The speed of time is one second per second.
  9. Re:Here's another supercomputer running Linux by BigJimSlade · · Score: 4, Funny


    What about this one?

    Named "LosLobos", the new supercomputer is scheduled to be fully operational by the summer


    After getting stuck in an infinite loop playing "La Bamba", IBM Engineers smashed it into little bits.