Cell-based "Roadrunner" Tops Elusive Petaflop Mark

prunedude writes "The NY times is reporting that an American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, is more than twice as fast as the previous fastest supercomputer, the I.B.M. BlueGene/L. To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day."

Comments

Question

[SeeSp0tRun]

What exactly would the military use a supercomputer for? Being a pessimist, the only thing I can really think of is the air force doing the obvious shady things that it does. But there has to be some statistical purpose for such a beastly machine.

Re:Question

[DigiShaman]

You know what they say. Garbage in garbage out.

I've heard rumors about how the data is collected for global temperatures. For example, some thermometers have been found on the roof tops of building coated with black tar while others close by a heat exchanger. But naw, that couldn't skew the results could it?

Re:The future

[the_humeister]

I certainly didn't, especially when Sony's proclamation of the PS2 being a supercomputer resulted in no actual emotion engine based system other than the PS2 being produced.