Researcher Discusses iPod Supercomputer

schliz writes to mention that in a recent interview with ITNews researcher John Shalf explained the purpose and some of the technical details of the newly-announced "iPod supercomputer." "Microprocessors from portable electronics like iPods could yield low-cost, low-power supercomputers for specialized scientific applications, according to computer scientist John Shalf. Along with a research team from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Shalf is designing a supercomputer based on low-power embedded microprocessors, which has the sole purpose of improving global climate change predictions."

Comments

Re:Oblig. misleading title

[TimCapulet]

Of course. iPods have nothing to do with this article at all. A less misleading title would be "Researcher Discusses Microprocessor Supercomputer". The word "iPod" is only there as an eye-catcher.

Re:It's about the bandwidth, not the MIPS

[pablomme]

That depends on the application. For embarrassingly-parallel tasks, such as some weather prediction methods, it's all about the processing power.

I do fairly-embarrassingly-parallel stochastic electronic structure simulations, and most of the time (except during set-up) I wouldn't care if the nodes were interconnected using dial-up modems. What matters in this case is having powerful and/or plentiful CPUs.