Supercomputing: Now Less Super, More Computing
Posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 6:04 PM by Malcolm
The last time the world got so excited about supercomputers was in 1996 when a machine built by Intel and Sandia National Labs called ASCI Red breached the 1-teraflop level. But Teraflops are so 20th century, for now we're getting jazzed up about IBM's $100 million Roadrunner computer, which recently broke the petaflop barrier to become the fastest supercomputer ... ever.
Something about big, round numbers excites the computing world and a petaflop, which is a measure of how fast a computer can complete an operation, is pretty big and round. The technology industry's excitement around Roadrunner and ASCI Red is understandable -- they both signaled a big shift in supercomputing -- from its core technologies to the tasks was supposed to do.
Edited on: Friday, July 18, 2008 1:57 PM
