NEC touts "world's fastest vector supercomputer"

NEC looks to have earned itself some new bragging rights in the supercomputer club with its new SX-9 model, which it claims is the "world's fastest vector supercomputer" on the market today. Helping it earn that distinction is a peak processing performance of 839 teraflops, and a peak vector performance of more than 100 gigaflops per single core (apparently a first for any supercomputer). That, NEC hopes, should make the SX-9 ideal for a wide range of uses, including weather forecasting, aerospace, the environment and fluid dynamics. No word on what it'll cost, but those looking to check out all that teraflopping for themselves should head to the Supercomputing 2007 expo in Reno, Nevada next month, where the SX-9 will make its public debut.

[Via Physorg]

[Jimmy Guo @ Oct 25th 2007 2:27PM]

Fast"er"?

[Phil Perman @ Oct 25th 2007 2:30PM]

Sadly the spell checker doesn't pick up everything :p

[Dan @ Oct 25th 2007 2:35PM]

My mac pro is faster

[LondonConsultant @ Oct 25th 2007 2:39PM]

I wonder what frame rate you'd get on Half-Life 2.

[Frostyfrog @ Oct 25th 2007 2:42PM]

Still not enough to run Crysis.

[Sander de Regt @ Oct 25th 2007 2:48PM]

But will it play Doom?

[t-bone @ Oct 25th 2007 2:52PM]

It'll probably play every copy of Doom in existence simultaneously!

[Alex @ Oct 25th 2007 3:35PM]

It actually creates a tear in time-space and gets every copy of Doom that has been or will be made and plays them simultaneously.

[Constable Odo @ Oct 25th 2007 2:50PM]

But does it do CoverFlow and QuickLook? HA!

Good they can hold onto that title for a week or so since the new MacPro Intel Penryn dual quad-cores are coming out. Then we'll see which one is faster'er. Sha-zam.

[Eddie @ Oct 25th 2007 3:01PM]

Is it just me or do gigaflops and teraflops sound made up?

"Yeah bro I totally just did a teraflop off the diving board and it was wicked gnarly!"

"After gigaflopping at the Series last night, the Rockies have got to be thinking of plan B..."

[Kurian @ Oct 25th 2007 3:25PM]

Why dont they make an x86 version.
I'm tired of of all these "useless" supercomputers.

[bjrcboy @ Oct 25th 2007 3:45PM]

Useless to the average joe but in certian sectors they are extremely valuable...

[blaktornado @ Oct 25th 2007 4:24PM]

The words "gigaflop" and "teraflop" just stop the future's computers from ever being cool, despite their awesome operating systems and input methods...

[DarkAardvark @ Oct 25th 2007 5:07PM]

so how big is this and when can i put it in my computer?

[M @ Oct 25th 2007 5:06PM]

Cool, Im always in need of napkin dispensers.

[Shibathedog @ Oct 25th 2007 5:06PM]

I wonder what overclocking something like that would be like

[blackfeather @ Oct 25th 2007 5:07PM]

But can it run POV-Ray?

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 25th 2007 7:24PM]

Probably in real time, with all the options.

[sotec_productions @ Oct 25th 2007 5:42PM]

There is another story online about a scientist that linked 8 PS3's together to create a super computer which rivaled his former supercomputer. The point of this type of setup is exactly what I'm going to build myself. It is basically a desktop server, which, when input from a remote computer is sent to the server, breaks up the workload, computes, or renders, or solves, and then sends it back to the remote machine. This IS useful for home users that render 3D animation, or graphics, such as fractals that can sometimes take the better part of a day for one image. It is NOT good for games, or everyday activity because not everything is sent to the remote server. Only specified actions are sent for resolve. Plus, your games would run like Vista on a 486 Cyrix with 16mb memory if it were even possible to use such a machine for gaming.

Calulator would be the tits!

And how much is this machine again? Priceless you say?

[eX @ Oct 25th 2007 10:33PM]

Yeah, I remember the thing about PS3's but I doubt you should take it seriously. While the Cell is undoubtedly capable chip for vector computations, there's simply no way it could compare to a super computer the guy mentioned. There are just too many bottlenecks there, beginning with tiny ram, slow hdd and a mere 100base lan port which considering the amount of processing it supposedly was doing is not going to be enough to carry data back and fourth.

[sotec_productions @ Oct 29th 2007 5:07PM]

Well, my assumption, since the specs of the machines weren't given, is that having built the previous supercomputer himself, or at least helped on, he jazzed those PS3's up to handle his computations.

[Bobs @ Oct 26th 2007 5:01AM]

a catagory 5 hurricane in a plastic cofee can with a molten heatsink/waterblock and melted concrete below