World's fastest: IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer breaks petaflop barrier using Cell and Opteron processors
By Thomas Ricker 
posted June 9th 2008 4:07AM
posted June 9th 2008 4:07AM
When you're looking to set a record this is how you do it. Not only has IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer come on-line, it's now the world's fastest -- twice as fast as the old BluGene/L champ -- and churning through 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. The $133 million supercomputer achieved the milestone with the help of 12,960 "improved" Cell processors (yes, like those powering your PS3) and a smaller number of AMD Opteron processors -- 116,640 processor cores in total. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon your perspective), Roadrunner is for military use only so you'll have to solve the traveling salesman problem on your own time. While not quite into Exaflop territory, we're definitely on the way.
[Thanks, Chris S.]
[Thanks, Chris S.]
LOL, not until you mentioned it!
Right, is it me or is this not a fantastic idea:
Each posted comment is checked for strings of keywords such as "FIRST!!!", "Does it play...", or "will it blend?" and ignore the comment and email the person to let them know how irritatingly repetitive and unfunny they are!
Would make the comments section a much more pleasant place to be :)
"Roadrunner is for military use only"
So, does playing Doom qualify as "military use"?
I'm sure they could rationalize it as a "military training exercise simulation."
You know how those "training exercises" go... ;)
Oh, I see......
SEVENTH!!!!!!!!! What now, bitches?
Maybe they can use it to find a way to make alzheimer bombs, but they should not call it the a-bomb then though, that is only confusing.
Is it still playing the game?
Sweet now I can play Wolrd of Warcraft
Hmm..If only al that technology could be used for anything other than WAR.
It could be used for defense against war... but yeah, i get your point. Why can't the best supercomputer be used for curing cancer or something like that? I suppose it has to do with funding.
I will wait for the Hello Kitty version of this supercomputer.
and i will wait for the diamond and gold version.
sweet now my GTA IV won't lag anymore
This always happens to me. Just when I bite the bullet and buy a new 'puter, something better comes out the very next week.
One of the intranet pages describe the Roadrunner's performance in the following way:
"Another way to think about a petaflop of performance is to imagine the entire population on earth — about six billion people – all working on handheld calculators at the rate of one calculation per second. In that case, it would take more than 456 years to do what Roadrunner can do in one day."
22 divided by 7 please.
3.1428571428571428571428571428571
He he,
It's close to Pi,
Anyone want some Pi, Maths Pi?
3.1428571428571428571428571428571
He he,
It's close to Pi,
Anyone want some Pi, Maths Pi?
Very sorry for Triple Post, Internet Lag.
Sorry
@nyandrews
If you really want to piss it off, try 1 divided by 0 and see what you get.
If you had one of these...you wouldn't have any lag of any kind!
This reminds me of the 70's when computers were the size of ROOMS.
And we are one step closer to the technical singularity. Woo-hoo!
I just appreciate the fact that the traveling salesman problem was referenced. Now how about some stochastic, multi-period optimization as well, hmm?
@ w00t: will you blend?
Maybe we can now play AA:TS with out lag.
This is what Microsoft recommends for running Vista.
I see what you did there....
FWIW, here's the software it uses:
XCAT + Warewulf (now named perceus) for imaging/diskless booting
http://xcat.sourceforge. net/
http://www.perceus. org/portal/
Linux 2.6.18 kernel
Torque as the resource manager : htt p://www.clusterresources.com/pages/products/torque-resource-manager.php
Moab Cluster Manager as the scheduler : htt p://www.clusterresources.com/pages/products/moab-cluster-suite.php
The Moab scheduler is on four of the top ten super computers as of November 2007 : http://insidehpc.com/2008/01/21/the-411-cluster-resources/
Source: htt p://www.lanl. gov/orgs/hpc/roadrunner/rrinfo/RR%20webPDFs/RRSysMgt-with-LAUR.pdf
Would you like to play a game?
Yes: Global Thermo Nuclear War?
Game already in progress.
ok, How about Tic-Tac-Toe?
All that money and speed and my Amiga 500 is still a better computer
quote: Anyone spot the roadrunner in the pic? :)
That's a penguin.
IBM have apenuin in the picture because the computer's operating system is Red Hat Linux.
No...there's a roadrunner (cartoon) in the picture. Also, wtf is "apenuin?" Imagine how fast this thing could run spell check for you!
Too bad for you that we live in a world where we can make computers this fast, yet it still takes Lens Crafters an entire hour to make eyeglasses!
What? No Doom? What does it serves for? :oO
There's only two problems:
1) It's running RedHat instead of Ubuntu
2) It can't run Rappelz
OK, a 1+ petaflop/s supercomputer tested with a software that mimics more than 1 billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses, and with the primary task of ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S's nuclear weapons stockpile... kinda reminds me of the fictional Skynet and TheTurk (Terminator).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(fictional)
The old one would allow us to "little people" to use it when needed thanks for nothing.