[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Planned supercomputers challenge human brain

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

The latest thing from IBM (see article below), to be delivered to the US
Government in 2004, will have 12,544 processors (7^2 x 2^8) and it will do
about "100 trillion calculations per second" (integer or floating point?).
A second machine due the following year will be 3.6 times as fast.  I wish
I had $290 million dollars to buy one!

I think it's kinda silly to compare the computing power of these things to
that of the human brain.  A brain and a computer are very different things
designed for completely different purposes.  For example, any desktop PC
with the right software can totally blow away any human competitor in
floating point arithmetic and that has been true for as long as we've had
affordable desktop computers.  --Mike

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Planned supercomputers challenge human brain
Government contracts with IBM to build two that will be fastest in world

By Michael Stroh Sun Staff
IBM Corp. has won a government contract to build two supercomputers whose
speed, company officials say, could for the first time approach the
theoretical raw processing power of the human brain.

The $290 million contract between IBM and the Department of Energy was
expected to be made public today at Supercomputing 2002, the annual
high-performance computing conference being held this week in downtown
Baltimore.

The first machine, dubbed ASCI Purple, will be capable of performing 100
trillion calculations per second when it's delivered in 2004, the company
said. That would make it nearly three times faster than the world's
reigning supercomputer champion, Earth Simulator, built for the Japanese
government by the NEC Corp.

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

full text:
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.computer19nov19,0,7947446.story


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