Europe gets first petaflops super

The Germans will have bragging rights to the floppiest supercomputer in Europe today as the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) is upgrading its Power-based massively parallel supercomputers to break through the petaflops barrier. IBM is on a BlueGene/P kick lately, and today, it will announce that the German Ministry of Research …

[Lars]

Yes, of course.

I remember when they used to call them "home made" or "self made" or something similar at top500. Not all that many years ago.

[raving angry loony]

Name?

This is Germany. It'll be called the Forschungszentrum Juelich Petafloppencomputerdamnfastgewerkenarbeitmitoast and it'll bloody like it! Then some Dutch wag will call it Hanz.

[Anonymous Coward]

Independence

Shame we have to rely on US technology.

There is a sad history of the Transputer and other innovations that failed.

Can't someone build a supercomputer based on a very large number of ARM chips ? How can Europe be self-reliant ? Don't our governments care ?

[It wasnt me]

@raving angry loony

new keyboard please

[pctechxp]

should have been x86

As we've had over 3 Ghz CPUs for years, just imagine the power if it was stuffed with a load of Xeons

[Toastan Buttar]

Obligatory:

"Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these..." and "Will I be able to run Crysis on it ?"

Seriously, though. What does anyone need a number-cruncher like that for ? It's got to the stage of a willy-waving contest.

Paris, cos.......well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but will it run...

..oh I can't be bothered.

[Nick Ryan]

re: should have been x86

"just imagine the power if it was stuffed with a load of Xeons."

You're right... their electricity supplier would be ecstatic if it was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Independence

> There is a sad history of the Transputer and other innovations that failed.

The Transputer didn't fail. The core is still selling.

If you've got a digital TV decoder - anywhere in the world - there's a good chance it's got a Transputer core in it.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Transputer

Having a cheap ST chip in a set top box is one thing.

Having a parallel computer architecture, upon which a new OS (Helios) and paradigm was to be based was the goal. The UK failed to fund this and the vision failed.

Most of the set top boxes with the ST chip in them are the cheap, poor performing ones. The better ones have a Pallas/Vulcan PowerPC chip in them. Alas, IBM messed up and they have not kept up in this space.