3 posts and columns on Top500

Fujitsu Supercomputer Remains World Champ, but IBM and Intel Are the Real Computing Kings

in News on November 14, 2011 at 5:58 am PT

The latest edition of the semiannual Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is out. Strangely, there’s no movement among the Top 10, and yet there’s still plenty to talk about.
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Faster Supercomputers: Your Tax Dollars at Work

in News on November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm PT

On Monday, researchers will release a twice-yearly list of the 500 biggest computers in the world. The latest rankings should provide some new clues about high tech’s relentless speed race, and how it’s being funded.

Ah, But Is It Vista Capable?

in News on June 18, 2008 at 7:36 am PT

It’s likely a challenge to program and a bitch to debug, but IBM’s new Roadrunner supercomputer is the most powerful in the world. With 12,240 cell processors typically found in Sony’s PlayStation 3 console and another 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips, Roadrunner has been benchmarked at 1.026 petaflops (1.026 quadrillion calculations per second).