Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SKA Telescope To Provide a Billion PCs Worth of Processing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the scaling-up-scalability dept.

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)."

4 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. since when did slashdot provide BS units? by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    1. Re:since when did slashdot provide BS units? by clem.dickey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Original article also compares a Peta of floating ops per *second* to an Exa of byte "processing and storing" per *day.* Journalism profs should save that article for class discussion.

  2. Re:thousand million? by afidel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The long rule is stupid, if you are going to use units as big as a million million just use scientific notation.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  3. Re:Hard disks "somewhat unreliable"? by kalirion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And I have an uncle who smoked a pack a day for 40 years and never got lung cancer.