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North America's Fastest Linux Cluster Constructed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the where-was-the-lightning dept.

SeanAhern writes "LinuxWorld reports that 'A Linux cluster deployed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and codenamed 'Thunder' yesterday delivered 19.94 teraflops of sustained performance, making it the most powerful computer in North America - and the second fastest on Earth.'" Thunder sports 4,096 Itanium 2 processors in 1,024 nodes, some big iron by any standard.

5 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Very great and all... by irokitt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But why did they use itanium processors? Were they acquiring parts before Opterons were availabel? Did they have a problem with Xeon processors? Or did they have too much cash lying around?

    --
    If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
  2. "Most" powerful by Alomex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Look, any way you cut it the 100K computers Google is reputed to have is the most powerful Linux cluster anywhere in the world.

    1. Re:"Most" powerful by irokitt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      4,096 iTanium processors versus ~8,000 boxes sporting Pentium II, III, and 4 processors. But remember that the interest Google has is in disk access and redundacy, not complex mathematical computation. So it isn't configured as a 'supercomputer' per se.

      --
      If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
  3. Another Article by Flashbck · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And only 55 people were needed to build it!

  4. Probably OT, but... by Trogre · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... if you want a practically guided tour of LLNL, watch TRON sometime. They filmed it there (the science-lab live action stuff anyway).

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife