Re: COMP: Update on Petaflop Machine Progress

Doug Bailey (Doug.Bailey@ey.com)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 14:19:10 -0500

> Last night on my favorite web news(non)paper, I saw an
> announcement about Intel's latest supercomputer Pacific
> Blue, which manages 3.9 teraflops. I think that's the
> current record.

Actually, NEC's SX-5 series can peak at 4 Tflops. SGI's Mountain Blue, to be powered up in November at LANL, is allegedly going to be able to peak at 4 Tflops also. IBM is building a 10 Tflop machine machine for the DOE to come online in mid-2000. Additionally, IBM is working on a 100 Tflop beast to operate at Livermore and simulate H-bomb detonations. That machine is expected to power up around 2004.

As an aside, a computer engineer stated a petaflop machine could be built today. The only problem is it would cost US$ 55 x 10^9 to build.

Doug Bailey
doug.bailey@ey.com
nanotech@cwix.com