Comments on: IBM's Roadrunner breaks petaflop barrier, tops supercomputer list

In the twice-yearly list of the fastest computers on the planet, IBM has 5 of the top 10 most powerful computers, including the No. 1 spot.

[Seaspray0]

To me, this really isn't a single computer. It's more of thousands of computers that talk to each other. What make this unique from networking a couple of thousand computers together?

[smokified]

To understand this fully you should research what a "Blade" server is.
If you network a couple thousand computers together you do not get nowhere near the throughput as you do when you have what is considered a "super computer" Good luck finding ethernet switches that would handle all of that data.

[CharlesWDavis]

Seaspray0,

Likewise the dual-core could double the number???? But, consider that there apparently is just one input device for the problem and one output device for the answer.

[BlueToolsOne]

Dude that is one SERIOUS computer my goodness sake. Would love to play it in a friendly game of Chess.

JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi

[spothannah]

If I undeerstand the numbers correctly this computer is about 5 times as fast as the computer that was in first place 6 months ago. Seems that we are reaching "the elbow" of the upward curve of computer speed. Does this kind of speed make formerly intractable problems now solvable? What kinds of problems, formerly impossible in any human length of time, can now be solved in human lengths of times? What other problems remain intractable in this sense? Just curious.

[sirgak]

Seaspray0 wrote:
To me, this really isn't a single computer. It's more of thousands of computers that talk to each other. What make this unique from networking a couple of thousand computers to

Answer:
Well, the afore-mentioned network would have to have all its member computers (for instance, the internet) work on a single problem for a unified effort and a unified answer. And then, it probably still wouldn't be as fast.

[WDS2]

spoithannah, Roadrunner is about 1000x faster than the faster computer 10-11 years ago. That computer was about 1000x faster than the fasted computer 10-11 years before that. So every 10-11 years the big parallel supercomputers like these are getting 1000x faster. Before BlueGene and now ToadRunner the pace was slacking off a bit. It took some radical new design ideas to catch back up with the previous pace of improvements.

[WDS2]

Good grief, I need to spell check my postings better. Though ToadRunner does sound kind of cool...

[DramosJohnson]

Amazing speed and functionability. Many suppliers must have made many new inroads with
technology to get this monster to speak.
I received an email alert for a supplier to this "gigantic" system. The cables used here are from a solar company and chip maker EMCORE .
Like to vist the lab at Los Alamos some day.

[RicktheBrick]

With this kind of speed one would think that there would be at least one breakthrough in technology by now and at least one a week from now on. There has to be some economic justification for their existence. I am hoping IBM can use it to get their racetrack memory into production soon. A Terabyte of non-volatile ram memory would be nice.

[MathieuPard]

I love this:

Fun fact: the fastest supercomputer in the world--used to monitor the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile--is really just a PlayStation 3 on steroids. Roadrunner is based on the IBM QS22 blades, which are built using advanced versions of the Cell processor in Sony's PS3. It also runs using x86 chips from Advanced Micro Devices, making it the world's first hybrid supercomputer.

http://green-alternative.info