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£52 Million Govt Funding for New UK Supercomputer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-flops-a-good-thing dept.

Lancey writes "The BBC reports that the UK government has contributed £52 million towards the building of the High-End Computing Terascale Resource to replace two existing supercomputers currently in use by British scientists. The story claims a maximum speed of 100 teraflops, although it is unlikely that the machine will ever be pushed to this limit. Some of the government funding will also be used to train scientists and programmers to develop software capable of exploiting the machine's potential."

8 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Born Yesterday? by ExE122 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    However, it is unlikely to ever be pushed to its limits

    Give it a little while. Ten years ago, people thought 16MB of RAM was excessive. Ten years before that, 512KB was considered a luxury.

    --
    "Man Bites Dog
    Then Bites Self"
    --
    Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
    1. Re:Born Yesterday? by adz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      However, it is unlikely to ever be pushed to its limits It would be more accurate to say that it is impossible to achieve the theoretical maximum speed, and very hard to come even close. Without doubt the machine will be used extensively and people will ensure they get as much performance as they can out of the system. Given how much it costs, they're hardly going to use it as a doortstop, are they?!

  2. Thinking ahead. by RatOfTheLab · · Score: 5, Funny

    Preparation for the release of Vista, no doubt.

  3. Tony Blair a BOINC freak? by Arkham79 · · Score: 5, Funny

    wait til you see the average credit this thing gets on SETI@Home - there'll be a TBlair@10DowningSt account at the top of the list before you know it.

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    https://comerford.net
  4. Let's just get this out of the way, shall we? by Black+Copter+Control · · Score: 4, Funny

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of <kick> OW!

    --
    OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
  5. From my knowledge of UK government IT history . . by Don_dumb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This will be made by EDS, in a poorly thought out 'Public Private Partnership' and will cost three times as much, arrive in 2010 and be obsolete when it does.
    If you think I am being too cynical, just look at their track record. The CSA computer system, the air traffic control system, etc

    What amazes me is that they still get more work. Surely even New Labour have a limit to how far a bribe can take them.

    --
    If this were really happening, what would you think?
  6. Connection? by sane? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I wonder if that and this story on replacing the Trident nuclear deterent have any connection?

    No nuclear testing means all proving of a new warhead design have to be done computationally. Now a new machine is being bought...

  7. That's great but . . . by 02bunced · · Score: 4, Funny

    It would still take a good 10 seconds to start up OpenOffice.org

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