Look at all of those fans.....
Posted on 11/25/2006 10:45:01 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21 — The Pentagon awarded almost $500 million in contracts to I.B.M. and Cray Inc. on Tuesday to design a supercomputer several times as fast as today’s most powerful systems.
The Cray contract is for $250 million and the I.B.M. contract is for $244 million, to be spent during the next four years. They prevailed over Sun Microsystems.
The contracts are part of the High Productivity Computing Systems program being led by the Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. The program aims to achieve and surpass the ability to calculate more than a quadrillion mathematical operations per second — a milestone known as a petaflop.
The ultimate goal is to reach two to four petaflops. The prototype systems for which Cray and I.B.M. were awarded contracts are to attain speeds of at least a quarter of that goal.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Better move those flower pots.
DARPA Selects IBM for Supercomputing Grand Challenge
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ARMONK, NY, Nov 21, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded IBM (IBM) a four-year $244 million award to develop a machine that provides 100 times the sustained performance of today's general purpose supercomputers and is dramatically simpler to program, administer and use. IBM expects the project to support DARPA's goals of increasing productivity and enabling the United States to achieve long-term technological leadership while opening up the complex world of supercomputing to a broader audience of scientists and businesses.
The DARPA award will substantially increase research and development activities into mainline IBM technologies planned to be delivered in 2010 and beyond, such as an upcoming generation of the POWER processor (POWER7), the AIX(R) operating system, IBM's General Parallel File System, IBM's Parallel Environment, and IBM's Interconnect and Storage Subsystems -- technologies that are key to IBM's commercial product portfolio.
"IBM, DARPA and the mission partners will collaborate to develop a powerful and innovative design that will enhance the ability of supercomputers to help government, businesses and individuals," said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "We believe this new system will accelerate scientific breakthroughs, improve our nation's competitiveness and create new market opportunities."
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A Holistic Approach to Petascale Computing
One of the most significant barriers to sustained performance of more than a thousand trillion calculations per second -- called petascale computing -- is achieving the scalability of the hardware and software across a broad set of existing applications. The goal of the technologies delivered under this contract is to allow a wide spectrum of current applications and programming styles to cross the multi-petascale barrier in sustained performance. In addition, IBM's system architecture and design approach will enable a rapidly increasing number of programmers and developers to achieve high productivity for small scale and petascale systems.
Developing computing systems that are more usable by the national security community, science and industry is a key part of DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) mission -- an area of high performance computing which has historically been under-addressed. IBM will tackle this productivity challenge through an end-to-end holistic approach to advanced system architecture and design as well as software development in the following areas: operating systems, programming models, compilers, libraries, file systems, application development tools, performance tools, systems and data management, and serviceability.
So, this is how Skynet was created.
Cray Signs $250 Million Agreement With DARPA to Develop Breakthrough Adaptive Supercomputer
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SEATTLE, WA, Nov 21, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (CRAY) announced today that it has been awarded a $250 million agreement from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Under this agreement, Cray will develop a revolutionary new supercomputer based on the company's Adaptive Supercomputing vision, a phased approach to hybrid computing that integrates a range of processing technologies into a single scalable platform.
"This is a great day for Cray and the worldwide supercomputing community," said Peter Ungaro, Cray's president and CEO. "The DARPA HPCS program is an important force that is shaping the future of HPC and the entire computer industry. With this Phase III award, DARPA has recognized Cray as a leading innovator with the technology, vision and expertise required to deliver world-class, revolutionary supercomputing systems."
DARPA introduced the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program to facilitate development of the next generation of supercomputers for the national security, research, and industrial user communities. Cray's HPCS development program, code-named "Cascade," will produce a system with exceptional programmability, portability and robustness -- capable of scaling to unprecedented levels of sustained performance on real applications.
Under the Cascade program, Cray will develop a new hybrid system architecture that combines multiple processor technologies, a new high-performance network and an innovative adaptive software layer into a single integrated system. Designed to efficiently scale to large numbers of processors, the system will maximize productivity and performance by automatically matching the most effective processor technology to each application.
Over the course of the contract, Cray will incorporate elements of the Cascade program into commercially available products, including the peak-petaflops supercomputer, code-named "Baker," that will be delivered to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In addition, ORNL will be one of Cray's Phase III partners, focused around scaling from both the systems perspective and the performance of key applications.
"High productivity computing is a key technology enabler for meeting our national security and economic competitiveness requirements," noted Dr. William Harrod, DARPA program manager, in the DARPA press release announcing the Phase III award. "High productivity computing contributes substantially to the design and development of advanced vehicles and weapons, planning and execution of operational military scenarios, the intelligence problems of cryptanalysis and image processing, the maintenance of our nuclear stockpile, and is a key enabler for science and discovery in security-related fields."
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Cray's Cascade program will exploit the technological expertise of a variety of industry-leading partners in areas such as software tools and compilers, file systems, and storage. In addition, Cray will leverage AMD Opteron(TM) and HyperTransport(TM) technologies from Cray's long-standing strategic partner, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD).
"Cray has consistently demonstrated leadership in developing truly innovative solutions, focused on meeting the most demanding needs of its customers," said Hector Ruiz, Chairman and CEO of AMD. "The success of Cray systems based on AMD processors shows that our two companies can meet very aggressive performance goals, solve daunting engineering problems, and more importantly, develop solutions that can change the face of our world."
Fast is the word....
OMG, sorry about that...
Look at all of those fans.....
not to shabby for <47DB
hook up 3 of those in a super cluster then maybe I could beat Spider(Windows solitare game) on Difficult. ;) hehe
I recently attended Supercomputing 06 in Tampa for a week. That thing you linked to is a mere toy.
OH no doubt about it, but a toy that someone could actually afford and maintain.
No, this is how Deep Thought and then the Earth (including the award winning Finland) were created.
I thought it was Norway.
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