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IBM Sets Supercomputer Speed Record

Posted by timothy on from the hi-gene dept.

T.Hobbes writes "IBM's BlueGene/L has set a new speed record at 36.01 TFlops, beating the Earth Simulator's 35.86 TFlops, according to internal IBM testing. 'This is notable because of the fixation everyone has had on the Earth Simulator,' said Dave Turek, I.B.M.'s vice president for the high-performance computing division. The AP story is here; the NY Times' story is here."

5 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Tecord? by el_benito · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A new tecord?!? That's timpossible! But more seriously, does anyone know if there's an impartial 3rd party that ever confirms these measurements? I'm all for improving technology, but how do they verify their "tecords"?

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  2. 36 TFlops ? by MadX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if that is sustained ??
    I know that when the Mac G5 Cluster was developed they claimed tremendous speed, but when the sustained rate was calculated, it turned out to be much lower ...

  3. The most interesting part: by onetrueking · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the NYTime article:

    "The new system is notable because it packs its computing power much more densely than other large-scale computing systems. BlueGene/L is one-hundredth the physical size of the Earth Simulator and consumes one twenty-eighth the power per computation, the company said."

    1/100th the size and 1/28th the power. Now if that isn't a beautiful thing, I don't know what is.

  4. Smart machines by fionbio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've heard that the neural network of human brain has calculation speed of 4.4 TFLOPS. How soon these machines will start to THINK? Seems like what we need now is just more storage capacity and some well-written "thinking" software...

    1. Re:Smart machines by Doesn't_Comment_Code · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You're getting into some pretty deep issues now. Can a computer ever think? How would we know if it was thinking? At what point does the computer start thinking instead of just following instructions. No matter how complex it's instructions are or how fast it executes them, isn't it still just following instructions? What about us? Are we just following instructions?

      Timeout-- my head hurts.

      Which brings me to my next point. If computer ever could think, it would eventually start to think about how it thinks... And then it would overheat or explode.

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