[petuniasevan]

Looks like IBM's going to do some serious processor stacking in that "Blue Gene" gizmo. They are shooting for a PETAFLOP (one quadrillion floating point ops per second).

PETA shows up everywhere... ;-D

Here's a chart of how supercomputing has grown:

Computing Performance in FLOPS

Performance Tier	FLOPS equivalent	Key Platforms
kiloflops (KFLOPS)	1,000 FLOPS	IBM 701 (1953) IBM 704 (1955) Apple II (1977)
megaflops (MFLOPS)	1,000,000 FLOPS	CDC 6600 (1966) Cray 1 (1976) Intel Pentium (1993)
gigaflops (GFLOPS)	1,000,000,000 FLOPS	Cray 2 (1985) Thinking Machines CM-2 (1987) Microsoft Xbox (2001)
teraflops (TFLOPS)	1,000,000,000,000 FLOPS	Intel ASCI Red (1996) IBM ASCI Blue Pacific (1998) IBM ASCI White (2000) NEC Earth Simulator (2002)
petaflops (PFLOPS)	1,000,000,000,000,000 FLOPS	IBM Blue Gene (2005-2010?)

[petuniasevan]

And don't think I didn't hunt all over the 'Net for that chart! So be grateful! ;-)

[2Trievers]

We can ALL be GRATEFUL ... Thanks 'tunia! &;-)

There has been a technological revolution over the last decade in observing the heavens...

THEN	NOW