Blue Gene/L Tops Its Own Supercomputer Record

DIY News writes "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and IBM unveiled the Blue Gene/L supercomputer Thursday and announced it's broken its own record again for the world's fastest supercomputer. The 65,536-processor machine can sustain 280.6 teraflops. That's the top end of the range IBM forecast and more than twice the previous Blue Gene/L record of 136.8 teraflops, set when only half the machine was installed."

Comments

Beowolf cluster

[totallygeek]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...oh, nevermind.

Reader

[Jozer99]

They say it can launch Adobe Acrobat Reader in ELEVEN SECONDS!!!

Re:Reader

[Phat_Tony]

I was going to use:

It even meets the minimum system requirements for Longhorn!

For various uses

[strider44]

An IBM engineer was caught remarking "And boy can it hold a lot of porn."

I have just one question for Blue Gene/L

[Anonymous Coward]

and the answer had better not be 42.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

1983

[Xrathie]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Electricity Bill

[tpv]

I'd be able to figure out how to heck to pay the huge electric bill this would generate.

Easy - you'd run a huge federal deficit, and let future generations sort it out.

Was to be expected

[halleluja]

.. since Quake 4 just hit the shelves.

Re:Perhaps we could use it to..

[John Hurliman]

And moments before the breakthrough is finally computed, a blackout occurs due to the power consumption of the supercomputer.

Re:Results?

[LarsWestergren]

What useful science has the "Earth Simulator" produced?

Yes, better climate models and weather forecasts are obviously not needed. A little rain never hurt anyone, as this years hurricane season clearly shows.

Nitpicking

[darkitecture]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

If you're going to be an 80s geek, don't half-ass it like most people. The correct line from WarGames is "SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?"

I know what I'd do...

[Jack Earl]

If I had a computer that fast...

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
int answer = 42;
printf("%d", answer);
}

Upgrade complete-

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in time for... Windows Vista(tm)

Time for Earth Simulator to make a Walmart run

[heroine]

Time for Earth Simulator to make a Walmart run and get some more Athlons to regain the top of the "supercomputer" chart.

Re:compiler?

[SnowZero]

Don't forget to compile with:
make -j 65536

The faster they get...

[Anonymous Coward]

The faster they make these things, the slower they sing that damn Daisy song.

Re:still en vogue?

[sgant]

When this was announced, world chess champion Gary Kasparov said "ok, no way am I playing this fricken thing"

Yes, but. . .

[02bunced]

It still takes 15 seconds to start up OpennOffice.org

Re:hmmm

[LordFnord]

> Oh, and BTW, the IO nodes of this beast run linux

Yeah? Hmmmm.

lordfnord@eris:~$ ssh bluegene-l.ibm.com

Welcome to Linux 2.6.14

bluegene-l login: falken
Password: joshua

Greetings, Professor Falken. Would you like to play a game?

1. Checkers
2. Chess
3. Protein folding
4. Global thermonuclear war

Uh-oh.

Re:Results?

[indifferent children]

Seem like it's just a wang dangling contest

No, this is IBM. Wang went out of business years ago.

Re:hmmm

[troc]

Greetings, Professor Falken. Would you like to play a game?

Am I the only one who is incapable of reading that (even in the dubious privacy of my own head), without saying it in a "computer" voice?

Troc.