Inside Tsubame, Japan's GPU-Based Supercomputer

Startled Hippo writes "Japan's Tsubame supercomputer was ranked 29th-fastest in the world in the latest Top 500 ranking with a speed of 77.48T Flops (floating point operations per second) on the industry-standard Linpack benchmark. Why is it so special? It uses NVIDIA GPUs. Tsubame includes hundreds of graphics processors of the same type used in consumer PCs, working alongside CPUs in a mixed environment that some say is a model for future supercomputers serving disciplines like material chemistry." Unlike the GPU-based Tesla, Tsubame definitely won't be mistaken for a personal computer.

Comments

Wow! [Obligatory]

[cashman73]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of one of these could do! Oh, wait! ;-)

Clever name

[subStance]

Ironic name: tsubame means sparrow in japanese, and also has the slang usage of toy-boy (as in a cougar's toy-boy).

Not sure what to read into that ...