Z28Envy
06-11-2008, 06:40 PM
Found this on my hometown new channel website. Thought it was petty cool. Note how big the computer is!
http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S474420.shtml?cat=10151
IBM’s Roadrunner New Supercomputer
(KAAL) -- A team at IBM in Rochester is revolutionizing the supercomputer, as we know it.
It's called the Roadrunner and as the name suggests this latest innovation is so special because of its speed.
From the outside it doesn't look like anything different.
But housed inside these racks is power that's never been seen before anywhere in the world.
"So this is a thousand times faster than what the previous supercomputers were measured at," says Andy Schram.
The Roadrunner is a pentaflop, that's a 10 with 15 zeros behind it.
While that may not make a lot of sense...this might help bring that into perspective.
"It’s the type of performance that allows us to model the human brain," says Andy Schram.
That's right a pentaflop is how fast your brain works.
And this is the only computer anywhere that has it.
The roadrunner uses 2.6 megawatts of power...that's as much as a small city.
It weighs 1/2 a million pounds...
And to move it from where it is in New York to its permanent home in Los Alamos it will take 25 semi trucks.
The entire system is made up of 296 racks like this one...filling 10-thousand square feet.
While that's all impressive, it's what this roadrunner can do that will change how some everyday things in your life are done.
"Physics, biomedical, animation graphics this machine can do that to a level of detail that can't be done today, and in a small amount of time, this could produce something that consumers would use, drugs, financial, that's the end result."
The hybrid Roadrunner combines two IBM technologies that were already around, including some from the Playstation 3.
It’s something that people at IBM are very proud of.
"It really brings pride and what can it lead to next," says employee Susan Lee.
Here's one more comparison for you to see just how fast the roadrunner is.
If the entire population on earth, that's about 6 billion people, were all working on handheld calculators, doing one calculation per second, it would take two days to do what the roadrunner can do in just one second.
The Roadrunner will be in the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos lab by the end of the year, where it will simulate the nuclear weapons stockpile to ensure that it is safe and operates correctly.
http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S474420.shtml?cat=10151
IBM’s Roadrunner New Supercomputer
(KAAL) -- A team at IBM in Rochester is revolutionizing the supercomputer, as we know it.
It's called the Roadrunner and as the name suggests this latest innovation is so special because of its speed.
From the outside it doesn't look like anything different.
But housed inside these racks is power that's never been seen before anywhere in the world.
"So this is a thousand times faster than what the previous supercomputers were measured at," says Andy Schram.
The Roadrunner is a pentaflop, that's a 10 with 15 zeros behind it.
While that may not make a lot of sense...this might help bring that into perspective.
"It’s the type of performance that allows us to model the human brain," says Andy Schram.
That's right a pentaflop is how fast your brain works.
And this is the only computer anywhere that has it.
The roadrunner uses 2.6 megawatts of power...that's as much as a small city.
It weighs 1/2 a million pounds...
And to move it from where it is in New York to its permanent home in Los Alamos it will take 25 semi trucks.
The entire system is made up of 296 racks like this one...filling 10-thousand square feet.
While that's all impressive, it's what this roadrunner can do that will change how some everyday things in your life are done.
"Physics, biomedical, animation graphics this machine can do that to a level of detail that can't be done today, and in a small amount of time, this could produce something that consumers would use, drugs, financial, that's the end result."
The hybrid Roadrunner combines two IBM technologies that were already around, including some from the Playstation 3.
It’s something that people at IBM are very proud of.
"It really brings pride and what can it lead to next," says employee Susan Lee.
Here's one more comparison for you to see just how fast the roadrunner is.
If the entire population on earth, that's about 6 billion people, were all working on handheld calculators, doing one calculation per second, it would take two days to do what the roadrunner can do in just one second.
The Roadrunner will be in the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos lab by the end of the year, where it will simulate the nuclear weapons stockpile to ensure that it is safe and operates correctly.