Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Supercomputers To Move To Specialization?

Posted by Hemos on from the imagine-a-beowulf-oh-wait dept.

lucasw writes "The Japan Earth Simulator outperformed a computer at Los Alamos (previously the world's fastest) by a factor of three while using fewer, more specialized processors and advanced interconnect technology. This spawned multiple government reports that many suspected would ask for more funding in the U.S. for custom supercomputer architectures and less emphasis on clustering commodity hardware. One report released yesterday suggests a balanced approach."

6 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Oh! No! End of the World! by Goalie_Ca · · Score: 3, Funny

    Skynet had 60 Teraflops IIRC and they're talking about 100!

    Let's hope this isn't tied into Nukes somehow. Wait a sec, a massive virus has already spread disabling millions of computers!

    RUN HIDE! THE END IS UPON US!!!!!!!

    --

    ----
    Go canucks, habs, and sens!
    1. Re:Oh! No! End of the World! by BabyDave · · Score: 5, Funny

      There's a far more important thing to worry about - could this be the end of "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster ..." jokes? After all, the phrase "Imagine a custom-built supercomputer utilising similar technology (albeit more specialised) to that found in one of those!" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

  2. *flops not necessarily important... by Shenkerian · · Score: 3, Funny

    What if you care only about integer operations?

    --
    You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
  3. Re:trigonometry? by Gherald · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do HP's Saturn or other such special-purpose processors have hard-coded higher-level functions?

    Indeed, functions Cost_an_arm_and_a_leg() and Fork_over_much_dough() are hard-coded, and always return a value of "1".

    --
    The unofficial /. digest
  4. Good question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Good question there man.

    I am also wondering, which should I get? I mean, with Doom III on its way, to get decent frames should I go specialized supercomputer, or a linux beowulf cluster?

  5. yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Because all your general super-computing needs will be filled by the G5.