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Supercomputer On the Cheap

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. From TFA by DaveCar · · Score: 5, Funny

    At its highest price, the Blue Gene/L cost $1.3 million per rack

    Pamela Anderson eat your heart out!

  2. Re:Stanford will always have the biggest by bunratty · · Score: 5, Informative

    Distributed processing is fine for "embarrassingly parallel" problems where the compute nodes don't need to communicate with each other. However, many problems solved by supercomputers or large clusters need communication between the compute nodes, so aren't amenable to distributed solutions.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  3. Re:Obligatory by Tap13579 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will it blend? That is the question.

  4. JUST IN TIME!! by armodude · · Score: 5, Funny

    FOR RUNNING VISTA the way it was meant to be run!!!