A supercomputer that is only the size of a 30-inch television set, and capable of performing two trillion operations per second was built by IBM
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/blegene1.html
The new supercomputer, which the scientists of IBM's research division managed to compress into extremely tiny dimensions, is ranked 73rd in the list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The full list will be presented next week by an independent research group that annually ranks the top of the computing industry, based on industry-accepted metrics.
With a performance of 2 tera-flops (2 trillion operations per second), the prototype scaled down to unprecedented dimensions of the Blue Gene/L computer made by IBM managed to get a respectable place on the list - even though its entire size does not exceed one cubic meter.
The new computer will be part of a powerful computer system, which is now being built by IBM for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, following a $290 million contract that IBM won at the end of 2002.
Upon its completion, in 2005, the power of the system will reach 128 times that of the computer that was just presented and it will be at the top of the list of the most powerful computers in the world. It will be six times more powerful than the most powerful machines available today, consume 1/15 the amount of current for each calculation operation, and be ten times more compact.
The entry of the tiny Blue Gene/L, which has just been completed, into the list of the 500 most powerful systems in the world signifies a breakthrough in the way supercomputers are built, which will expand the range of applications running on such machines. This computer is twenty times smaller than servers with similar performance such as cluster configurations of Linux systems.
Two teraflops of computing power have required entire computer rooms and dozens of RACKS, while the new computer is, as mentioned, the size of a television set. The dramatic reduction in power consumption, construction costs and space requirements allows IBM engineers to place massively parallel computing within the reach of scientists and engineers in a wide variety of research and industry fields.
As part of the Blue Gene project, IBM is developing a family of supercomputers adapted to diverse tasks, with a flexible midrange range, and the ability to handle large amounts of information with minimal current consumption. Among the first applications that make use of the capabilities unique to IBM's Blue Gene family - running advanced models of how the human DNA helix folds. Deciphering these processes will allow a better understanding of the essence of various diseases - and open up new ways of healing.
The complete system in IBM's Blue Gene/L family is expected to provide a performance of about 360 teraflops, that is, 360 trillion calculation operations per second. The 64 base cabinets that will make up this computer will occupy an area that is about half the size of a tennis court. The scientists plan to use this computer for space research, the behavior of pairs of stars moving in even orbits, the simulation of processes in an environment that combines laser and plasma, and the aging processes of explosives and old nuclear materials.
They knew how to compute
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~696944678~~~80&SiteName=hayadan
