- Feb 14, 2004
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Souped-up Playstation anyone? :Q
Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.
"We took the basic chip design (of a PlayStation) and advanced its capability," said Turek.
In some ways, he said, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3."
Turek said the computer in a two-hour test on May 25 achieved a "petaflop" speed of sustained performance, something no other computer had ever done
One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second. Only two years ago, there were no actual applications where a computer achieved 100 teraflops -- a tenth of Roadrunner's speed -- said Turek, noting that the tenfold advancement came over a relatively short time.
Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.
"We took the basic chip design (of a PlayStation) and advanced its capability," said Turek.
In some ways, he said, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3."
Turek said the computer in a two-hour test on May 25 achieved a "petaflop" speed of sustained performance, something no other computer had ever done
One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second. Only two years ago, there were no actual applications where a computer achieved 100 teraflops -- a tenth of Roadrunner's speed -- said Turek, noting that the tenfold advancement came over a relatively short time.