The speed is a notch faster than the 36.01 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.
The Top500 rankings are updated twice yearly, and new results will be published at the SC2004 supercomputing show in Pittsburgh beginning Nov. 6.
SGI isn't promising it will remain the speed king. "It's clear there are a few horses all making a dash for the finish line," said Dave Parry, senior vice president of SGI's server and platform group. "IBM may scrape up a few more cabinets and do a little more."
Virginia Tech is another organization looking for a little supercomputer glory before the new list is published. The school announced Tuesday that it clocked its upgraded System X machine at 12.25 teraflops.
Columbia uses Itanium 2 processors--a combination of current models that come with 6MB of high-speed cache memory and as-yet-unannounced models with 9MB of cache.
SGI has been struggling to reclaim the prowess and prestige it had in 1990s, when its high-end computers stood out for demanding graphics challenges such as digital animation in the movie "Jurassic Park." But using Intel processors has given the company's equipment a boost, said Walt Brooks, division chief of NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Center--the Itanium machines are six times faster than the SGI models they replace.
SGI's system is different from many clusters of low-end machines that make up most supercomputers today. Columbia is made of twenty 512-processor machines connected with the high-speed InfiniBand networking technology, and each machine runs a single operating system.
That "single-system image" approach is good for tasks such as simulations of the space shuttle's aerodynamics, Brooks said. Clusters can be used for fluid dynamics, "but it's extremely inefficient with those systems and the programming is very difficult," he said.
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- Ooops! Mods, please delete these.
- I mistakenly hit "Reply to Topic" instead of "Reply to Message." :-/ (Read the rest)
- Posted by: Joel R Posted on: 12/06/04 You are currently: Logged In | Log out
 Pixar Studios, Jurassic Park, Titanic, Lord Of The Rings.... itanalyst | 10/26/04 |
  Don't forget ILM asky | 10/26/04 |
| Again the beauty and power of Linux Linux User 147560 | 10/26/04 |
| Where is AMD? htotten | 10/26/04 |
| And how many processors are in that cluster? The King's Servant | 10/27/04 |
 Okay, Having done minor research.... The King's Servant | 10/27/04 |
| Yeah, but Virginia Tech stomps it with FEWER processors! Joel R | 12/06/04 |
| Interesting John L. Ries | 10/26/04 |
| One market Microsoft will NEVER offer a product for ... George Mitchell | 10/26/04 |
| I haven't had my morning coffee yet so... The King's Servant | 10/27/04 |
| Yeah, but Virginia Tech stomps it with fewer processors! Joel R | 12/06/04 |
| Ooops! Mods, please delete these. Joel R | 12/06/04 |
