News Super-Computer Race Hots Up

"America is looking to regain its place as home of the world's civilian fastest computer with a new $50m project.

Three private firms will use the government grants, equivalent to £28m, to snatch back the title from Japan."

Full story from SkyNews: here

Come on BigZ, snatch one back for the UK team

 

We're all behind you mate!

 

Best line of the article.

 

Think of all that cooling.

 

(Possibly BTX!!!!)



wonder if it'll play Doom 3?

 

lol call Iceman im sure he has enough money to fund this

 

hahahah!

then give all the hardware to bigz, imagane that! 2,000 FX-53's under LN2 overclocked to 4ghz

 

can you say, SuperPI?

 

Do you wreckon SuperPI will be fast enough?

Death

 

super pi wouldnt run, competely different architecture. It could calculate pi to 1m in well under a second though.

 

as it happens the super-computer race may be hotting (or should i say "colding" ( up a bit after all

recently reserach into superconductors (materials in which current can flow without resistance... i.e. without significant loss of heat) has gone into the realm of almost commercial applications. Theres been rumours circulatiung that they will start to be working at room temperature with some of te new alloys being developed. If this is possible then, pretty soon nanoscale computers could (in theory ) run, without loss of heat, so no heatsinks/noise, at speeds like petaflops, with mere watt's of power. However loads of scientists are sceptical about the discoveries and are trying to replicate it themselfs, but if its true the ramifications are huge.. Imagine electronics without resistance. If your no electronics guru, then imagine your on a motorcycle. Resistance is like trying to drive though a crowded busy street, takes a while. No resistance = no cars. You just fly on through without loss of speed (or energy in superconductor terms!).

though im not electronics guru... i could be speaking crap, thats how i understand it!

 

also superconducters are Super expensive.

 

for the time being, once manufacturers use them in everything they will be cheap as chips... silicon chips, that is