Petaflops? DARPA Seeks Quintillion-Flop Computers

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 23, 2010 @05:43AM from the that's-a-lotta-flops dept.

coondoggie writes "Not known for taking the demure route, researchers at DARPA this week announced a program aimed at building computers that exceed current peta-scale computers to achieve the mind-altering speed of one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. Dubbed extreme scale computing, such machines are needed, DARPA says, to 'meet the relentlessly increasing demands for greater performance, higher energy efficiency, ease of programmability, system dependability, and security.'"

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how sweet and innocent of them! by zero.kalvin · 2010-06-23 05:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

Call me tinfoil hat wearer, but me thinks they want a faster way of cracking encryption...
I Love DARPA by sonicmerlin · 2010-06-23 05:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

They come up with ideas that only ultra-geeks and science fiction nerds could come up with, and then they get billions in funding for it! It's like paradise. The fact that they're actually successful at advancing human technology is just icing on the cake.