- Jun 1, 2001
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IBM is building a new super computer, and it sounds damn cool. Read about it <A HREF="http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene/press_release.html" target="_new">here</A>.
Here's an extract:
"The SMASH architecture differs from existing approaches in three ways:
• It dramatically simplifies the number of instructions carried out by each processor, allowing them to work faster and with significantly lower power and chip surface requirements (the traditional approach is to add complex features to gain performance);
• It will facilitate a massively parallel system capable of more than 8 million simultaneous threads of computation (compared to the maximum of 5000 threads today);
• It will make the computer self-stabilizing and self-healing -- automatically able to overcome failures of individual processors and computing threads.
Blue Gene will consist of more than one million processors, each capable of one billion operations per second (1 gigaflop). Thirty-two of these ultra-fast processors will be placed on a single chip (32 gigaflops). A compact two-foot by two-foot board containing 64 of these chips will be capable of 2 teraflops, making it as powerful as the 8000-square foot ASCI computers.
Eight of these boards will be placed in 6-foot-high racks (16 teraflops), and the final machine (less than 2000 sq. ft.) will consist of 64 racks linked together to achieve the one petaflop performance."
"Ignorance is bliss, but I tend to get screwed over."
Here's an extract:
"The SMASH architecture differs from existing approaches in three ways:
• It dramatically simplifies the number of instructions carried out by each processor, allowing them to work faster and with significantly lower power and chip surface requirements (the traditional approach is to add complex features to gain performance);
• It will facilitate a massively parallel system capable of more than 8 million simultaneous threads of computation (compared to the maximum of 5000 threads today);
• It will make the computer self-stabilizing and self-healing -- automatically able to overcome failures of individual processors and computing threads.
Blue Gene will consist of more than one million processors, each capable of one billion operations per second (1 gigaflop). Thirty-two of these ultra-fast processors will be placed on a single chip (32 gigaflops). A compact two-foot by two-foot board containing 64 of these chips will be capable of 2 teraflops, making it as powerful as the 8000-square foot ASCI computers.
Eight of these boards will be placed in 6-foot-high racks (16 teraflops), and the final machine (less than 2000 sq. ft.) will consist of 64 racks linked together to achieve the one petaflop performance."
"Ignorance is bliss, but I tend to get screwed over."
Yummy 
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