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IBM's Sequoia becomes world's fastest supercomputer

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C

ComputerMKII

Banned
IBM’s Sequoia crushes all other supercomputers in new ranking

Step aside, Fujitsu K — there's a new king of the mountain, and its name is Sequoia. For the first time in three years, an American-built device has taken top spot in a ranking of the 500 most powerful supercomputers. Developed by IBM, Sequoia will be used to – get ready for the letdown – carry out simulations to help extend the life of aging nuclear weapons.

IBM's Sequoia, a member of the BlueGene/Q system, boasts an impressive 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 1,572,864 cores. It is 1.55 times faster than its closest rival, Japan's Fujitsu K Computer, and uses over 1.5 million processors – yes, you read that right: it has 1,572,864 cores just to be exact.

Looking at its power another way, Sequoia is capable of calculating 16 quadrillion calculations per second. To help understand that kind of power, the BBC said it can do in one hour what it would take 6.7 billion people using hand calculators over 320 years to complete working non-stop.

Sequoia, which resides at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is also more energy efficient, consuming 7.9 megawatts, as compared to K which uses 12.6 megawatts.

The TOP500 ranking is published every six months by German professor Hans Meuer and US-based Professor Jack Dongarra.

Finishing in third place is the new Mira supercomputer, an IBM BlueGene/Q system at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois (8.15 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 786,432 cores). The only other U.S. system to finish in the Top 10 is the upgraded Jaguar at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which was the top U.S. system on the previous list and now ranked sixth.

Sequoia will be used to help the National Nuclear Security Administration simulate nuclear explosions down to the molecular scale, and potentially assist in such areas as climate modeling and studying the dynamic changes in a protein's shape.
Click to expand...
http://io9.com/5919213/ibms-sequoia-crushes-all-other-supercomputers-in-new-ranking
 
S

SUPREME1

Banned
Looking at its power another way, Sequoia is capable of calculating 16 quadrillion calculations per second. To help understand that kind of power, the BBC said it can do in one hour what it would take 6.7 billion people using hand calculators over 320 years to complete working non-stop.
Click to expand...


USA BITCHES.


You think the new Lenovo Thinkpads will use this tech next year? I'd to surf the web a little faster.
 
C

Clydefrog

Member
Looking at its power another way, Sequoia is capable of calculating 16 quadrillion calculations per second. To help understand that kind of power, the BBC said it can do in one hour what it would take 6.7 billion people using hand calculators over 320 years to complete working non-stop.
Click to expand...

uuRal.gif
 
M

Mr Swine

Banned
SUPREME1 said:
USA BITCHES.


You think the new Lenovo Thinkpads will use this tech next year? I'd to surf the web a little faster.
Click to expand...

All parts are probably bought in China so it's super cheap to make!


Just joking ;) very impressive numbers! Wish I had that kind of computer at home xD
 
S

sangreal

Member
Computer said:
It's in the article:
Click to expand...

Well, it is pretty easy for anyone to miss. Maybe they should make that info more prominent or write it a few more times in that paragraph.

IBM's Sequoia, a member of the BlueGene/Q system, boasts an impressive 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack benchmark using 1,572,864 cores. It is 1.55 times faster than its closest rival, Japan's Fujitsu K Computer, and uses over 1.5 million processors – yes, you read that right: it has 1,572,864 cores just to be exact.
Click to expand...
 
S

SnakeswithLasers

Member
Looking at its power another way, Sequoia is capable of calculating 16 quadrillion calculations per second. To help understand that kind of power, the BBC said it can do in one hour what it would take 6.7 billion people using hand calculators over 320 years to complete working non-stop.
Click to expand...
Actually BBC, this does nothing to help me understand. It just sounds big.
 
A

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
Cool, but I'm not sure if the core comparison is fair. Don't GPU stream processors also count as cores? If that's the case, modern GPUs have around a thousand cores each, right?

And I agree the hand calculator comparison is stupid. Any simple calculation program in a computer is hundreds or thousands of times faster than a person punching numbers into a hand calculator.
 
H

Hootie

Member
Article said:
Developed by IBM, Sequoia will be used to – get ready for the letdown – carry out simulations to help extend the life of aging nuclear weapons.
Click to expand...

ygYbF.jpg


they created the worlds fastest computer for THIS?
 
K

-KRS-

Member
Computer said:
Does the IBM Sequoia even run on Windows?
Click to expand...

I don't think they make Windows for super computers, nor for anyting other than X86 CPUs (and ARM now I guess). It probably runs some sort of Unix. So no crysis for you!

And even if it could run games they would probably run like shit because games are not optimized for 1.5 million cores. :p
 
K

kehs

Banned
Looking at its power another way, Sequoia is capable of calculating 16 quadrillion calculations per second. To help understand that kind of power, the BBC said it can do in one hour what it would take 6.7 billion people using hand calculators over 320 years to complete working non-stop.
Click to expand...

If they were trying to make that sound impressive through that analogy...they failed pretty hard.
 
L

LeleSocho

Banned
16.32 petaflop/s








16.32 MOTHERFUCKING PETAFLOP/S


and i'm sure in a few year i will laugh at this number on how small it is
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
That sounds impressive and all, but couldn't they come up with a cooler name than "Sequoia"?

I mean, it sorta diminishes the actual technological accomplishment...
 
L

LeleSocho

Banned
Gaborn said:
Just wait 10 years or so and we'll start seeing exaflops. Then zettaflops and then yottaflops.
Click to expand...

Yeah i know, hell in 2004-2005 the 3rd fastest supercomputer was around 10 teraflop/s and now it's like 2-3 high end consumer PCs hooked up together... and a fifth of that will probably be the next gen consoles.


Oblivion said:
That sounds impressive and all, but couldn't they come up with a cooler name than "Sequoia"?

I mean, it sorta diminishes the actual technological accomplishment...
Click to expand...
Dude Sequoia is an awesome name for a computer... i would name mine like that.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Wait, so it has 1.5 MILLION cores, yet the amount of calculations it can do is only one order higher than teraflops?

I take it back, that doesn't sound impressive at all.
 
K

-KRS-

Member
Oh, linux even? That's nice. Though after reading a bit about Supercomputer OSs it appears that linux is the OS on most of them. It is pretty versatile. Running on everything from embedded platforms up to supercomputers is quite a feat.
 
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