Virginia Tech Supercomputer Up To 12.25 Teraflops

gonknet writes "According to CNET news and various other news outlets, the 1150-node Hokie supercomputer rebuilt with new 2.3 GHz Xserves now runs at 12.25 Teraflops. The computer, the fastest computer owned by an academic institution, should still be in the top 5 when the new rankings come out in November."

hrm

[gutterandthestars]

6.40tflops should be enough for anybody

Re:Density

[Ingolfke]

And if we could harness the heat from this machine we could probably power most of the North Eastern United States.

Obligatory:

[Dorsai65]

but will it run Longhorn?

and yet...

[BobWeiner]

...it still doesn't come with a floppy disk drive.

/sarcasm

Re:So compare it to......

[capmilk]

Bang for the buck would make the Apple system better.

Sure, but what would you rather say: "I just bought an Apple computer" or "I just bought a Cray computer"?

12.25 Teraflops ...

[Anonymous Coward]

and still just one mouse button.

*SCNR*

Re:Density

[koi88]

Of course, the Earth Sumulator wasn't built (just) to run linpack.

I think most super computers weren't built just to run benchmark tests.
Well, at least I hope.

Thank you VT

[Alcimedes]

I have it on good insider knowledge, that this entire cluster is going to be put to the best possible usage.

Not disease solving, not genetic mapping, not calculating weather patterns.

No, what they're going to do is remaster the Original Star Wars series, right from the laser disc versions!!!!

Imagine, a digitallly remastered bar scene where Han shoots first!!@$!@#!one!@

/kidding

Re:hrm

[dr_d_19]

...or perhaps Hans Moravec was just plain wrong :)

much the same as a baby

[nounderscores]

2:14am EDT August 29, 1997...

Researcher: "Go to your machine room! And no Command and Conquer until you do your homework!"

Joshua:"Oh yeah? Would you LIKE TO PLAY A GAME?"

Re:hrm

[hackstraw]

Hans Moravec's book "Robot" suggests that 100 teraflops is about the level required for human intelligence.

Yeah. I've been waiting for years for those dumbasses to make a computer that can outperform my ability to perform 100 trillion double precision floating point operations a second flawlessly.

Re:hrm

[Randy Wang]

I, for one, welcome our new Beowulf overlord...

Hm.. with this much compute power..

[elemur]

If you add in VirtualPC... presumably the clustered version.. you should start to get to the level of compute power that was recommended by Microsoft for Longhorn... though it still wouldn't be the high end. Expect some sluggishness..

Re:hrm

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new Beowulf overlord...

Hey, wait a minute; that is actually funny! Is that allowed?

Rankings

[thopkins]

should still be in the top 5 when the new rankings come out in November.

Wow, ranked higher than the Virginia Tech football team this year.

Theoretically Speaking

[MooseByte]

"Everything works in theory, but not pratice."

In theory, anyway.

Re:Wow!

[Ohreally_factor]

What, compared to the people who post the Beowulf/Soviet Russia/SCO jokes a million times over? Hard to get a worse sense of humour than them, as even this "new" 7xxxxx user is sick of their lame jokes.

In Soviet Russia, Beowulf cluster jokes are sick of you.

Re:hrm

[hunterx11]

Would we like all the answers it gave us[?]

Of course not. How are the philosophers going to get booked on talk shows?

this is ground-breaking

[SethJohnson]

I'm a robotic software researcher, so this notion really affects me.

This post deserves its own slashdot article all to itself. Not only has an AI-driven robot posted on slashdot, but apparently someone has designed the robot to research software. So it would make sense that the robot would be reading slashdot. I think the editors should set up an interview with this AI drone known as SnowZero.

Re:hrm

[BorgCopyeditor]

How are the philosophers going to get booked on talk shows?

As a professional philosopher, let me ask what talk shows these are that you are watching. Also, what are the phone numbers of their producers?

That's all nice and all...

[xornor]

But it only has 1150 mouse buttons...