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Supercomputer On the Cheap

Posted by kdawson on from the mere-six-teraflops dept.

jbrodkin writes "You don't need Ivy League-type cash to get a supercomputer anymore. Organizations with limited financial resources are snatching up IBM supercomputers now that Big Blue has lowered the price of Blue Gene/L. Alabama-Birmingham and other universities that previously couldn't afford such advanced technology are using supercomputers to cure diseases at the protein level and to solve equally challenging problems. IBM dropped the price of the Blue Gene/L to $800K late last year before releasing a more powerful model, Blue Gene/P, last month. Sales of Blue Gene/L have more than doubled since then, bringing supercomputing into more corners of the academic and research worlds."

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Supercomputer" by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i think my PS2 is supercomputer isnt it? Weren't the US government going to restrict exports on them as they were considered munitions or something daft like that. Same thing for old Mac G5 as i recall. Might be a stupid urban myth though.

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    (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
  2. Stanford will always have the biggest by bblboy54 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Stanford still has the the best idea.

    1. Re:Stanford will always have the biggest by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Interesting
      A friend of mine once ran the massively parallel supercomputer centre at LaTrobe. He told me of how the transputer-based Connection Machine would run blindingly fast in parallel, only to have the lights slowly wink out until one small corner of the display was the only thing lit. He said it was disappointing, and rather funny, how parallel jobs tended to go linear over time.

      Yep, sometimes you just need a few processors running very fast cycles.

      Sigh... we miss you, Seymour Cray. Wish you hadn't taken your Jeep out that day.

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      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  3. Re:academic and research? try finance by locokamil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the price goes even lower, perhaps they will. I find it difficult to see this happening though: the financial firm I work for has swung from supercomputer to linux clusters, and is showing no signs of going back. The TCO for a bunch of linux blades is just so much lower than a supercomputer... and because banks are so conscious of their bottom lines, they usually don't improve things if they are already working.