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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."
But sooner or later, they come after you claiming you haven't legally purchased your global climate change predictions, or that you've been sharing them with your friends online.
"Using the embedded microprocessor technology used in mobile phones, iPods and other consumer electronic devices, the boffins propose a cost-effective machine for running complex computational models."
In other words, all be damned if they decide to implement this monstrosity using actual iPods when they could use their talent to design and build greater efficiency through Spice/HDL, manufactured boards, and a pick-and-place.
Gee, A mesh of dedicated machines, hardcoded for more efficiency than a cluster of bloated pc's designed for MS office is actually more efficient? Geddouttahere!
[/sarcastic rant]
It'll be devoted to breaking DRM, the irony will be delicious.
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
Please stop hitting me!
There's a famous quote about supercomputers that says that supercomputers are really good memory systems, with a bit of CPU tacked on. The hard part isn't adding more MIPS -- we've done that with the massively parallel connection machine -- or even increasing speed. It's about shuttling the data around the computer efficiently so that all ALU's are constantly fed. During the cold war, Control Data had a supercomputer that came in two variants -- one for domestic use, one for export. The difference between them? Same ALU speed, but the domestic one had a scatter/gather memory access capability that sped up big matrix operations.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The observer effect: the more energy we consume studying the effect of energy consumption on climate change, the more we'll have to incorporate this factor into our models.
Positive feedback: if the results of these studies are striking enough to merit funding for more research, we'll no doubt consume even more energy to determine the effects of energy consumption on climate change.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: if this positive feedback between funding for climate change research and supercomputing energy consumption is not counteracted by efforts to reduce supercomputing power consumption for climate change research then we're damning ourselves by studying it.
What the hell does this have to do with ipods? They're building a supercomputer out of low-power MIPS procs..
embedded processors were, believe it or not, NOT invented by apple. I don't know if its true or not (i doubt it) but I've also heard that there were portable electronics BEFORE the ipod.
This is really cool, but slashot, come-on...most of us here are geeks, we don't need to have the word "ipod" tacked onto the end to indicate that we're talking about something small.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
BlueGenes, and their predecessor, QCDOC supercomputers, already use slightly modified low-power embedded system chips. How is this any different?
that could predict global warming without first causing it.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.