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IBM Building 20 Petaflop Computer For the US Gov't

Posted by timothy on from the because-the-nsa-hates-drm dept.

eldavojohn writes "When it's built, 'Sequoia' will outshine every super computer on the top 500 list today. The specs on this 96 rack beast are a bit hard to comprehend as it consists of 1.6 million processors and some 1.6TB of memory. That's 1.6 million processors — not cores. Its purpose? Primarily to keep track of nuclear waste & simulate explosions of nuclear munitions, but also for research into astronomy, energy, the human genome, and climate change. Hopefully the government uses this magnificent tool wisely when it gets it in 2012."

3 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Crysis? by thebheffect · · Score: 1, Redundant

    No Crysis comments yet? None? Ok.... But does it run Crysis?

  2. Doesn't compute by mritunjai · · Score: 0, Redundant

    So 1.6M processors with 1.6TB RAM means just 1 MB RAM(1.6e+12/1.6e+6) per processor. That sounds bogus!

    Also roughly 12 GFLOPS of processing power per processor. WTF kind of cluster/super computer architecture is that ?? Sounds more like 1.6M Cell "stream" processors or something like that, definitely not something made from AMD/Intel parts. Of course, assuming numbers reported are correct.

    --
    - mritunjai
  3. BS by More_Cowbell · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Sorry, need to call you out on that. You either suffer form some form of dyslexia or are karma whoring (for mods that don't RTFA). I actually was all set to mod you up, glad I really did RTFA.

    Boasting over 1.6 million processors and some 1.6TB of memory, the Sequoia system will initially be used to keep track of the US' mountain of aging nukes...

    Or were you saying that 'TB' is the new acronym for 'petabytes'?

    --
    Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH