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Virginia Tech Supercomputer Up To 12.25 Teraflops

Posted by timothy on from the changing-blacksburg's-climate dept.

gonknet writes "According to CNET news and various other news outlets, the 1150-node Hokie supercomputer rebuilt with new 2.3 GHz Xserves now runs at 12.25 Teraflops. The computer, the fastest computer owned by an academic institution, should still be in the top 5 when the new rankings come out in November."

5 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. The list of Supercomputers by ehmdjii · · Score: 5, Informative

    this is the official homepage of the listing:

    http://www.top500.org/

  2. Re:2.3GHz? by mmkkbb · · Score: 5, Informative

    they were sold off by MacMall at a slight discount around 6 months ago, along with a certificate of authenticity and a "property of virginia tech" sticker

    --
    -mkb
  3. Re:Density by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Informative
    Not necessarily. Processing power doesn't really scale linearly like that. Add 4 times as many processors doesn't mean the speed will increase 4x.

    First, as they try to increase the speed of the system, the bottlenecks start becoming more of a factor. Interconnects is one big obstacle. While the new System X may use the latest and greatest interconnects between the nodes, they still run at a fraction of the speed that the processors can run.

    Also the computing problems that they are trying to solve may not scale either with more processors. For example, clusters like this can be used to predict and simulate weather. To do so, the target area (Europe for example) is divided into small parts called cells. Each node takes a cell and handles the computations of that cell.

    In this case adding more processors does not necessarily mean that each cell is processed faster. Getting 4 processors to do one task may hurt performance as they may interfere with each other. More likely the cell is further subdivided into 4 smaller cells and the detail of the information is increased not the speed. So add 4x processors only increases data 4x but it doesn't mean that the data is solved any faster.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  4. Simulations by Ian_Bailey · · Score: 4, Informative

    The vast majority of clusters are for simulating very complex systems that require lots and lots of calculations.

    You can get a few hints by looking just at their names.

    The number one "Earth Simulator Centre" is fairly self-explanatory, going to their website show they create a variety of models for things such as weather, tectonic plate movement, etc.

    The number 3 LANL supercomputer "is a key part of DOE's plan to simulate nuclear weapons tests in the absence of actual explosions. The more powerful computers are designed to model explosions in three dimensions, a far more complex task than the two-dimensional models used in weapons design years ago." I imagine that most US government simulations would be doing something simmilar.

  5. Re:hrm by autophile · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to Wired...
    Now that the upgrade is complete, System X is being used for scientific research. Varadarajan said Virginia Tech researchers and several outside groups are using it for research into weather and molecular modeling. Typically, System X runs several projects simultaneously, each tying up 400 to 500 processors.

    "At the end of the day, the goal is good science," he said. "We're just building the tools. The top 500 is nice, but the goal is science."

    --Rob

    --
    Towards the Singularity.