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SKA Telescope To Provide a Billion PCs Worth of Processing
Sharky2009 writes "IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day)."
Could we get that in LoC's? Also, could we stick to the standard "one million thousands" unit, please?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Let's hear it for Reel Big Fish and the Pietasters! Is there a Reggae telescope?
Free Martian Whores!
SKA telescope? Madness!
Hey, IBM, you dropped your telescope.
Someone should pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Seriously, how is a PC a unit of processing ability? And one thousand million GB sticks is an Exabyte (hence the name). Perhaps you can just say 10^18 bytes. This is slashdot, not msnbc.
Some of us went and got an MBA; upon which, it knocked tens of points off of our IQ.
Now, 10 carrots 18? 18 what? Rabbits?
It should read 10 carrots and 18 rabbits!
And people say I'm stewped!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
...run Crysis at full resolution!?
He's just giving you a good comparison so you can picture an equivalent system using everyday objects. Kind of like how instead of just saying "Bob is tall", you should use strong imagery like "Bob is as tall as a 6-foot-4-inch tall tree"
My webcomic
First of all, no one would be using manual storage to transfer the data.
Just throw up some numbers that makes sense to us. Like 99,420.5393 gigabit/second.
Most large ISPs use OC-192 as the backbones of their infrastructure. You'd need more than 10,200 of those to handle that data load, and that's ignoring the overhead.
Or to put it into numbers that the RIAA can understand: 1.5707309 * 10^9 music CDs every single day.
At 15 pieces of music per CD and $80,000/song that's $1.88 * 10^15 dollars/day flowing through that network. That's 632 times larger than the US federal budget for 2008.
No wonder the music industry is in trouble!
The only reason MSFT would salivate is because they charge per core.
Astronomy comes up with pretty pictures. Other areas not so much so. So what would you rather have you tax money go to... Pretty pictures. Or columns of crunched numbers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They're gonna need a LOT of pigeons.
Maybe they could construct a really fast computer to process the data in real time so they wouldn't have to store it all. They might even release a press release about it.
From the FAQ:
How far can this telescope see?
A: ONE STEP BEYOND!
nonsig. unsig. desig.
Beowulf? A cyber-Beowulf made of a billion PCs? Grendel would stand no chance...
Ezekiel 23:20
6 feet and 4 inches.
the SKA is unlikely to use ... a cloud-based approach
Well, duh. You can't see anything when it's cloudy.
Have you read my blog lately?