North America's Fastest Linux Cluster Constructed

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.

Comments

LLNL's usefulness

[SuperBanana]

my brother in law was driving a hydrogen fuel car from the lab 10 years ago as a test)

I think that speaks volumes as to the usefulness of LLNL's research. After all, it's been 10 years, and there are still no hydrogen-powered cars available for purchase by consumers. Furthermore, there is extremely little research needed in the area; hydrogen conversion kits were developed by numerous companies and individuals decades ago.

Why no hydrogen cars? Well, it could have something to do with hydrogen being a net-loss fuel; it takes more energy to make than it provides. But hey, Dubya loves it. Why? Well, you can extract hydrogen from natural gas(which pollutes just as much as burning natural gas, but it moves the emissions out of sight of the consumer, yay!)

Why is it people like you who hear "Nuke" rant on and on like biased little children and post inflamatory things like this?

I'll stop ranting when my nation's defense budget isn't the largest in the world several times over both in total and per capita- we spend OVER 50% of our budget on "defense" and our budget is larger than our top 3 potential enemies -combined-. Those are 2001 stats, mind you- and the defense budget has only gone up.

Re:It's all about sticking it to the mac.

[Roydd McWilson]

Too bad this article is about an Itanium cluster, not x86.