Supercomputing

HenryTo · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 11:16 pm Post subject:

The future of computing/supercomputing: Replacing silicon with graphene:

http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/21098/?nlid=1217&a=f

HenryTo · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:21 am Post subject:

This is not mentioned in the article, but the Cray XT4 at Oak Ridge is capable of 119 teraflops of performance - although it is still only 10% of the computing power of the fastest supercomputer in the world today, "Roadrunner."
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Researchers Run World's Largest-Scale Fusion Energy Simulation on Cray Supercomputer

Groundbreaking Study of Electron Transport in Prototype Fusion Reactor May Have Implications for Cleaner, More Abundant Energy Source

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/researchers-run-worlds-largest-scale-fusion/story.aspx?guid=%7B95F7B915-A232-45F7-A1A8-A6A8DD36FFC6%7D&dist=hppr

diesel · Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:51 am Post subject:

I am reading about the limits of nano-computing at the moment and to put today's supercomputers in perspective an MIT professor named Seth Lloyd has shown that the potential computing capacity of a kilogram of matter equals pi times energy divided by Planck's constant. Since the energy is such a large number and Planck's constant is such a small number, this equation generates an extremely large number: about 5 x 10^50 operations per second.

If you were to use the figure of 10^16 cps that many believe is sufficient for the functional emulation of human intelligence, the ultimate laptop would function at the equivalent brain power of five trillion trillion human civilisations. Such a laptop could perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years (that is, ten billion human brains operating for ten thousand years) in one ten-thousandth of a nanosecond!

Food for thought...

And these numbers are just with nanotech. Picotech, Femtotech and bending the speed of light offer computers of an order of magnitude more powerful than this.
_________________
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein

HenryTo · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:13 pm Post subject:

Diesel,

Appreciate the thoughts on nano-computing. My personal first step (probably this time next year) is to get 64-bit windows and a SSD in my new laptop - then we can start talking about optical and then quantum computing. Cool

In the meantime, the UK's Met office is set to obtain a supercomputer from IBM - one that is set to hit the petaflop barrier by 2011:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39457156,00.htm

diesel · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:15 pm Post subject:

Yes my enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of me. BTW, have you read about reversible logic gates? Amazing!

I really like the semis at the moment. Have been averaging into this sector over the last few weeks. Very strong positive divergence and also a very unloved sector IMO.

I am also looking at replacing my laptop soon. I have a Lenevo T61p at the moment but are unimpressed with Microsoft Vista. Looking to move to Apple macbook pro or air with the SSD option.

Regards,
_________________
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein

HenryTo · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:22 pm Post subject:

Diesel,

I heard the 64-bit version of Windows Vista runs really well as long as you have the necessary resources (over 4 gigs of memory, etc). Check out the latest comments and reviews - I doubt the Apple OS is going to 64-bit soon.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/07/30/windows-vista-64-bit-today.aspx

Best,
Henry

diesel · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:18 pm Post subject:

Hi Henry,

I think MAC OSX is now mostly 64 bit.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/64bit.html

The main problem I have with windows on laptops is with its window management, particularly when dealing with small screens.

Heres a quote from Anandtech:

HenryTo · Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject:

Oops, you're correct - looks like "Leopard" also provides native support for 64-bit applications, so it is definitely close to a "pure" 64-bit OS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.5

Thanks for pointing this out.

Henry

HenryTo · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject:

The Secret Lives of Supercomputers, Part 1:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/The-Secret-Lives-of-Supercomputers-Part-1-64076.html?welcome=1218228455

HenryTo · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 3:02 pm Post subject:

The Secret lives of Supercomputers, Part 2. BTW, the information on the computing power of the "Googleplex" is very dated (2004). For a more current estimate, simply multiply them by a factor of 10.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64082.html

HenryTo · Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:52 am Post subject:

IBM to build Canada's fastest supercomputer at the University of Toronto:

HenryTo · Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:08 am Post subject:

Stanford's Folding@Home project's current performance about to surpass three petaflops, due to the recent participation of ATI's GPUs. Note that its performance just surpassed two petaflops slightly less than two months ago:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

diesel · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:59 pm Post subject:

In a recent Nvidia presentation they mentioned that if all Nvidia GPUs 8 series plus were put to work on folding@home they would add 7000 pentaflops of computing power to folding@home.

If you add this to programmable ATI GPUs, Xbox360s and the ps3 you would have a seriously fast exaflop supercomputer. Cool

Add all the worlds computing power in and you would be in the zettaflop range or close to it I would think.
_________________
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein