Cray supercomputer is world's fastest (that we're allowed to know about)

Seattle-based Cray has been wowing us with massive, ridiculously fast supercomputers since the '70s, establishing a position for its machines high on every geek's most wanted list -- despite never publishing a Doom benchmark. In recent years the title of "world's fastest" supercomputer had been lost by the company, ping-ponging from Wako, Japan to Armonk, NY, but is now back in Cray's hands with the implementation of the XT Jaguar. It's comprised of over 45,000 quad-core Opteron processors, 362GBTB of memory, and has a 10PB (petabyte) storage array, able to perform calculations at a massive 1.64 petaflops. That's over one and a half quadrillion operations per second and more than 50 percent faster than IBM's previous heavyweight. Mind you, Cray is quick to point out that this is the fastest machine being used for non-classified research, a caveat that just makes us even more curious about what's keeping the Pentagon's server rooms warm and loud... and apparently orange.

Update: That should be 362 terabytes of memory, not mere gigabytes.

[Via UPI.com]

[Cybergypsy @ Nov 12th 2008 8:53AM]

I need one ;)

[Temo @ Nov 12th 2008 9:32AM]

I need two.

[vampritt @ Nov 12th 2008 9:57AM]

With the rise of GPU over CPU superiority for specific task, it will be interesting how the super computer will take shape in the future.

Read somewhere that transcoding using nVidia 260 GPU (reference: Badaboom and Protein Folding) is about 20 times faster than Intel Quad. So does this mean 4500 opteron Quad is about as powerful as 225 nVidia 260 GPU ? (busy finding SLI interlink connector..hehehe).

The party will get merrier when intel unveil Larrabee GPU (cough), easy programmable in C+ and C++ (correct me if i am wrong) .Hear that ATI, nVidia? So when Direct X 12 released we just need to replace the driver with Larrabee (cough) instead of replacing the old video card - provided its still fast enough).

Only time will tell (yeah.. real soon)

[MarbleMind @ Nov 12th 2008 10:08AM]

@vampritt

Faster, yes. But also less precise. Many other network/cluster computing projects haven't adopted GPGPU exactly because of this reason.

"Specific task" is indeed the keyword here. There will be no universal take-over.

[kal326 @ Nov 12th 2008 10:36AM]

I need to destroy this. Its starting to sound a like like skynet......

I don't even want to know what the classified ones are capable of....

[vampritt @ Nov 12th 2008 11:35AM]

sorry folding is Stanford Univ not MIT (blushing)..

[vampritt @ Nov 12th 2008 9:24PM]

check this out guys... it already happed!!!!

http://www.gpgpu.org/

GPU is taking over specific and general purpose computing.

[Brian @ Nov 13th 2008 11:06AM]

But can it play Doom??

[GingerFox @ Nov 12th 2008 8:53AM]

45,000 quad cores wtf? best hope theres never some kind of shortage, or we will have to stop this nonsense.

*grumbles* 45,000

[Reader @ Nov 12th 2008 12:10PM]

? You're acting like this is someone's PC... It's a bloody super computer that will be crunching numbers for various projects 24/7.

[bob sakamano @ Nov 12th 2008 8:53AM]

will they be releasing a netbook sized version of this anytime soon?

[GingerFox @ Nov 12th 2008 8:54AM]

*thinks* no:P

[Kamokazi @ Nov 12th 2008 9:32AM]

Yes.

In about 50 years or so.

[kb2zuz @ Nov 12th 2008 11:45AM]

Not even 50 years, judging by Moore's Law I'd say you could expect these specs in a laptop some time around 2032 (if laptops still exist then.)

[jorvay @ Nov 12th 2008 2:28PM]

yeah, but MS won't let them sell it with XP.

[Boarderwoot @ Nov 12th 2008 8:55AM]

So is the name of the company Crazy or Cray? I know its early and all...

[Carsten Otto @ Nov 12th 2008 8:57AM]

362 GByte? I guess TByte.

[lejupp @ Nov 12th 2008 9:01AM]

It better be TByte. 362GByte would mean a mere 2MByte of RAM per core. Hardly believable, given that each core probably has more cache than that to work with.

[basroil @ Nov 12th 2008 9:28AM]

quite possible that it's only 2mb/core, it's meant for highly parallel computing anyway, so no core needs more than a small portion of the overall picture. In fact, chances are that most cores have far less memory to work with and a few hubs take up the majority of the memory.

[eiki @ Nov 14th 2008 10:43AM]

someones probably already mentioned this, but when i saw the image, i thought 'what does Cray have to do with the car compnay Jaguar?'

[allislost @ Nov 12th 2008 8:57AM]

Can i get a discount for bulk orders?

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Nov 12th 2008 10:24AM]

.. building a beowulf cluster?

[Tarnation @ Nov 12th 2008 8:59AM]

Freakin' Sweet



Hate me if you must....but, Will it play Crysis?

[fred @ Nov 12th 2008 9:02AM]

It played it, and beat it 34,000,000,000 times in the past 55 seconds.

[Steve Childs @ Nov 12th 2008 9:45AM]

Sod Crysis, will it run Vista? ;)

[Tarnation @ Nov 12th 2008 9:58AM]

@Steve

It RAN Vista RAN Windows 7 chewed up and spit out Leopard owned Linux then realized they were all not robust enough contemplated and created Windows 2015. All before calculating 42.

[MarbleMind @ Nov 12th 2008 10:17AM]

Well... in all likelihood, we will never know. I doubt that anyone ever really tried running anything else than serious work on a large-scale cluster computer. For one very particular reason.

[liv @ Nov 12th 2008 11:31AM]

screw Crysis... this monster can divide by zero and... dare I say it... succeed! *gasp*

[johntruth @ Nov 12th 2008 2:47PM]

I heard the classified ones are fast enough to finish an infinite loop in 8 minutes.

[SpydaKat 17 @ Nov 12th 2008 4:02PM]

Pssh, my mind can run circles around that thing.

[thedesolate1 @ Nov 12th 2008 9:56PM]

This thing can run SKYNET for fucks sakes...
I personally dub it the
Cray Engine.

[Renato @ Nov 12th 2008 9:01AM]

Typo: Aramonk should be Armonk

[ijyt @ Nov 12th 2008 9:30AM]

Or how the troll should be under his bridge.

[Rocketboy @ Nov 12th 2008 11:16AM]

And WHY hasn't iEye been hit with the ban hammer yet?

[w4rh34rt @ Nov 12th 2008 12:07PM]

Jesus, these people (iEye and the like) only post to get people's reactions and attention. Don't even read the comment, just low rank his ass and then maybe he'll get bored and fuck off. 12-year olds generally get bored pretty quick I thought lol.

Anyway, about the computer. Simply amazing, I wonder how much one of these bad boys costs? Anyone know any one who has one for pre-order, we could all go around and gawp at it haha.

[broli @ Nov 12th 2008 9:02AM]

In some years we'll laugh about how our netbook once was huge.

[Bryan @ Nov 12th 2008 10:14AM]

Devices can only get so much smaller and still be usable...we've already reached that point with cell phones and we're knocking on the door with the latest netbooks.

[Josh @ Nov 12th 2008 2:27PM]

The screen size is a big limiting factor - they're not going to get any smaller because there's a useful limit - until *cheap* flexible OLED screens that can be rolled up come into play (i assume). That will dictate the area mostly, the depth will mostly be dictated by having a tactile keyboard - and of course the power of the book. The limiting factor of nm then comes into play with chips, we can only go so small before we have to start messing with things like taking quantum effects into account - and if Intel keep at it then we're going to hit that wall in the near future. Of course with things like 3D transistors and quantum computing on the horizon, we won't have to worry about that ;) And of course nanotubes will be in everything..

The power, rather than size is what we'll be commenting about in the future. The average netbook knocks the socks off most computers built over 5-6 years ago.

[Games GOblin @ Nov 12th 2008 9:06AM]

Can it run C....

oh well ....

[Str1ker @ Nov 12th 2008 4:07PM]

Can I be highest rank too?...please

[Str1ker @ Nov 12th 2008 4:23PM]

lol...I was supposed to reply to the comment below.

I look like an idiot don't I

[Labrador @ Nov 12th 2008 9:06AM]

To put a weird angle on this: it takes about 100 teraflops to simulate a human brain down to the neuron level, so you could say this thing has a brain 16 times the size of a human's. Eat your heart out, Einstein!

[ajprice @ Nov 12th 2008 9:15AM]

Thats fine, but try asking it if it likes toast or bagels. Instant BSOD :) .

[Ryan Trevisol @ Nov 12th 2008 9:43AM]

Betcha you can shut it down with some old-skool tic-tac-toe.

[Jay @ Nov 12th 2008 9:52AM]

It is the software, not the hardware holding AI back. And it has been for a long time. Software is not following Moore's law.

[LondonConsultant @ Nov 12th 2008 11:17AM]

Greetings Professor Falken, shall we play a game?

[noyp @ Nov 12th 2008 10:36PM]

How about a game of Global Thermonuclear War?

[loosely_coupled @ Nov 17th 2008 5:01PM]

That is an incredible simplification... You can't directly compare large arrays of conventional processors with the potential information processing capacity of the human brain by simply comparing theoretical peak FLOPs. In fact, I don't believe we are even close to understanding the intricacies of neural processing. I can't remember the details, but recently there was an article about a research project where a modern supercomputer was able to simulate a tiny slice of rat brain at a fundamental physiological level, and it took like weeks of processing to simulate something like 100 nanoseconds of time...

[Tim Spence @ Nov 12th 2008 9:09AM]

Like the teasers for Red cameras, I'm getting increasingly bored of these announcements. Forgive me if you disagree, but it's hardly amazing anymore, because all you do to claim the crown is throw more and more processors at it. The only amazing thing is that someone has stumped up enough cash to get that many chips hooked up together.

If I had a million-billion-trillion pounds, I could just link up several XT Jaguars, and declare myself as owning the fastest supercomputer. Hardly amazing, is it.

I used to be wowed by supercomputer stats, when I was 15, but now I guess I'm old and cynical and can see that all it amounts to is large sums money rather than pure technology.

Like Red cameras, I still want one though.

[dervheid @ Nov 12th 2008 9:39AM]

"If I had a million-billion-trillion pounds, I could just link up several XT Jaguars, and declare myself as owning the fastest supercomputer."

So, the answer to the question at the bottom of the article...

The "million-billion-trillion pounds" might not be 'accurate', and it would also depend on your personal definition of "several"