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Supercomputer

nvidia

FASTRA Desktop Supercomputer Built With 4 Nvidia 9800 GX2 Graphics Cards

Looking at new computational methods for tomography—a technique used by medical scanners to create 3D images—University of Antwerp researchers have built a budget supercomputer using four Nvidia 9800 GX2 graphics cards (a total of eight GPUs with 1,024 stream processors) as its super-calculating soul, which "perform as fast as 350 modern CPU cores." More »

supercomputer

IBM Mixes Water, Chips to Make Supercomputer And Cook Dinner Too

It might sound like a risky idea, but IBM's new Power 575 supercomputer uses a new system of chip-level water-cooling to keep its processors chilled. Nicknamed "Hydro Cluster", the machine actually uses 448 of the new 5GHz POWER6 processors. They must kick out a hefty heat load because IBM thinks there're eco-friendly uses for the spare hot water. Much like the Swiss town pool mentioned the other day, the suggestion is that it could be used for heating people's homes or even for cooking. Check out the video to see how IBM plans to take water even closer to the chip surface in the future. More »

skynet

IBM Kittyhawk to Host the Entire Internet, Eat the Planet with Fries

In what is a sure sign of recklessness and suicidal tendencies, IBM has decided to take us closer to Skynet with Kittyhawk, a global-scale shared supercomputer so enormously big, so gigantastically powerful that it will be able to run the entire internet as one application. Because that's exactly what the planet needs, a Skynet-like supercomputer with 67.1 million cores and 32 petabytes that could probably gain consciousness, take over a Large Hadron Collider and open a black hole to send us all to hell. Or discover the secret of eternal life and the perfect Margarita. Either way works for me.
[IBM via Wikinews]


pedal power

MIT Cyclists Set Record for Pedal-Powered Supercomputing

A team of 10 cyclists from MIT have set a new world record in the field of Human Powered Computation (HPC) by drawing 1.2 kilowatts of electricity and powering a a SiCortex SC648 supercomputer over the course of a 20 minute nonstop ride. If you recall, SiCortex pulled a similar stunt with another group of bikers at this year's NextFest. The original idea came in response to Google's "Innovate or Die" contest that challenges contestants to use pedal power to develop a "zero emission invention." More info and a video after the break. More »

worm supercomputer

World's Biggest Supercomputer is a Virus?

The Storm Worm Botnet currently infects between one and ten million computers worldwide, which means that it has access to a huge amount of processing power and somewhere between 1 and 10 petabytes of RAM. This apparently makes it one of the most powerful computers in the world, with more computing power than the ten fastest supercomputers in the world combined. More »

microwulf

Supercomputing on a Budget

If you crave a little more power than overclocking can provide, then maybe building your own supercomputer is an option. Tim Brom built this 26.25 gigaflop supercomputer from scratch, for only $2,500. Since then hardware costs have dropped, and it should now only cost you $1,256 to build the same machine. More »

heavy metal

MareNostrum, the World's Most Gorgeous Super-Computer

This is the 9th biggest supercomputer in the world, MareNostrum. It also happens to be the most gorgeous supercomputer in the world, installed in a former chapel with acres of glass and steel. It belongs to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and is polished daily by hundreds of groveling grad students. Probably.
More »

pcs

Cray to Create PetaFlop Computer with 24,000 Opterons

Cray, that maker of supercomputers from days of yore, has decided to jump into the biggest superschlong computer contest, creating a machine it has given the prosaic name of "Baker." The company expects it to be the first computer to break the petaflop barrier. That is, unless IBM beats Cray to the punch with its newest honking monster, Blue Gene. More »

gizmodo ink

Gizmodo Ink

  • The big kahuna of supercomputing industry conventions (now there's a niche), SC|05, is going on all week in Seattle. Formerly a haven for computer science nerds only, the annual gathering is a lot more mainstream (there was even a Bill Gates sighting on Tuesday). The must-have swag at the show? A Sun Microsystems "No, I will not fix your computer" t-shirt. [Seattle Times]
  • CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, UPN and the WB hold a rare joint press conference to inform advertisers that the DVR isn't death incarnate for conventional TV commercials. One of the tenuous linchpins of their argument: DVR users pay more attention to what's flashing on-screen, even if it's a commercial that's being fast-forwarded at 10 times normal speed, so if something catches their eye, they'll rewind back to see it. Right, that makes sense. I'm predicting no one today will bring up the fact that you can easily enable a 30-second jump on TiVos that can completely skip an entire commercial without seeing one frame of it. [WSJ (reg)]
  • WSJ tech maestro Walt Mossberg rattles off a list of his favorite tech blogs and doesn't mention the Giz. I guess that means I can rip on him for calling destinations like Digital Camera Resource and iLounge blogs, when they're really full-fledged websites that happen to have RSS feeds. I guess that means my favorite blog is the Wall St. Journal. [WSJ (reg)]
  • Still over a week 'til Black Friday, but if you haven't already mapped out your day of tech buying gluttony, you're not a "savvy shopper". [Detroit Free Press]
  • A USC student reviews the WiFi-rific Mario Kart DS for the school paper and absolutely loves it. If you're the kid's parents reading this, now you'll know why his GPA will dip this semester. Also, assuming he's playing online under the local Nintendo-McDonald's WiFi cloud, you'll also know why he's put on a few pounds. [The Daily Trojan].
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