Although a victor won’t be declared for two weeks yet, Silicon Graphics has become the second computer maker to boast that its machinery is leading a competition for world’s fastest supercomputer.
The system, a $50 million Linux-based NASA machine called Columbia, which SGI sold in July, can perform 42.7 trillion calculations per second, or 42.7 teraflops, SGI announced Tuesday. However, that speed isn’t the final word: The system used only four-fifths of the 10,240 Intel Itanium 2 processors in the full machine being uncloaked at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The speed is a notch faster than the 36.1 teraflops IBM reported for its Blue Gene/L system in September. That performance was enough to edge Big Blue ahead of NEC’s Earth Simulator, which since 2002 has led a list of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers. IBM’s test, performed Sept. 16, also is likely to be outdone by a later score.
Source: c|net
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