From: Herb Martin (HerbM@LearnQuick.Com)
Date: Mon Dec 05 2005 - 12:02:03 MST
> From: Michael Vassar
> Ben: Why would you only extrapolate 10-fold improvements in
> computing
> hardware. Things could slow down a bit, especially due to
> heat dissipation
> problems, but 100-fold over 15 years still seems very conservative.
> Kurzweil would say to expect 40,000-fold improvements. How
> much does the difference matter?
The Blue Gene/L deployed at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory recently doubled its performance to 280.6
teraflops - up from 136.8 teraflops from the supercomputer
list issued in June. 512MB RAM per NODE = 32,768 GB memory
131,072 32-bit PowerPC 440 processors running at 700 MHz
-- faster processors seem to be limited by heat issues.
(Math looks wrong, but there are 2 processors per NODE,
giving the 2^45 total RAM.)
Currently more than 10^5, maybe 10^6 times faster than
typical commodity hardware (PCs).
[It has a theoretical maximum performance in excess of
367 teraflops.]
>From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene :
Blue Gene/P
IBM currently plans to finish Blue Gene/P in 2006.
Blue Gene/P is expected to be the first supercomputer
to break 1 petaflops, or 1 quadrillion floating-point
operations per second.
Blue Gene/Q
The last known supercomputer in the Blue Gene series,
Blue Gene/Q is expected to reach 3 petaflops.
(Blue Gene is not one computer but rather an architecture
with various implementations, and each may have many
physical machines.)
Japan to build world's fastest supercomputer
From:
<
http://news.techwhack.com/1752/japan-to-build-worlds-fastest-supercomputer/
>
Japan has announced plans to build the world's fastest supercomputer. The
plan is to develop a product, which is around 73 times faster than the
current fastest supercomputer on planet earth. These plans were revealed by
the Japanese government today. The current title is held by The American
Blue Gene/L system supercomputer developed by IBM currently stationed at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.
This machine is capable of performing at 136.8 teraflops, or 136.8 trillion
calculations per second as per the statement by Japan's Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. The plan of the
Japanese government is to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10
petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second. This would put it at
around 73 times the speed of the current record holder.
Near term about 10^6-10^7 times faster than your typical
PC (commodity) hardware.
-- Herb Martin
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