Jun 10 2008$100 Million Supercomputer Breaks Petaflop Barrier, Supposed To Keep U.S. Nuclear Weapon Stockpiles Safe And Reliable, Eek!
The $100 Million Roadrunner supercomputer was designed and built by IBM for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration and is housed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It was named Roadrunner before that's New Mexico's state bird and because they're fast. Also, Wile E. Coyote is a dipshit.
The Roadrunner is a hybrid machine, the world's first, that uses both traditional computer chips and the Cell Broadband Engine which was designed for the PS3. It occupies 6,000 square feet, weighs 500,000 lbs and delivers world-leading efficiency - 376 million calculations per watt. Roadrunner will be used primarily to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile (we're all gonna die!). It will also do research into astronomy, energy, human genome science and climate change.
It was the first to perform at a petaflop (one thousand trillion calculations per second), and would make a great secondary computer if I had room for it. Some interesting info from the press release:
In total, Roadrunner connects 6,948 dual-core AMD Opteron® chips (on IBM Model LS21 blade servers) as well as 12,960 Cell engines (on IBM Model QS22 blade servers). The Roadrunner system has 80 terabytes of memory, and is housed in 288 refrigerator-sized, IBM BladeCenter® racks occupying 6,000 square feet. Its 10,000 connections - both Infiniband and Gigabit Ethernet -- require 57 miles of fiber optic cable. Roadrunner weighs 500,000 lbs. Companies that contributed components and technology include; Emcore, Flextronics, Mellanox and Voltaire.
Well that's sweet and all, but the real question is this: Can it handle me watching four or five pornos, playing Crysis, and downloading some movies illegally all at the same time? Hah -- really? Well how about all those things AND writing a nasty email to an ex-girlfirend? Got you there you stupid Roadrunner! WILE E. COYOTE FOR THE -- goddammit.
A video about the computer after the jump, along with links to very in-depth and wordy articles about it.
Cell supercomputer breaks petaflop barrier [maxconsole]
and
Government unveils world's fastest computer [cnn]
Thanks Ben and Peter, now lets go steal it so we can play some Crysis
Reader Comments
1. Redd - June 10, 2008 5:12 PM
First...!
2. Dave - June 10, 2008 5:20 PM
But will it run Crysis?
3. Freddy K - June 10, 2008 5:30 PM
Holy sh*t.
So I think this is Multivac, but with just not as cool of a name.
4. The Imaginary Reviewer - June 10, 2008 6:04 PM
I give it about two weeks before it gets a virus and unleashes a salvo of a-bombs towards Iceland.
5. flareback - June 10, 2008 6:25 PM
Um... why do we need a super computer to ensure the safety of a nuke? does it come equipped with a laser to blast people with if they try to hit the nuke with a hammer?
6. blp - June 10, 2008 7:28 PM
So this is the first stage of Skynet right? The Geekologie writers obsession with robots taking over the world wasn't insane after all! They have the robots and now the super computer to control their decisions!
7. WIll - June 10, 2008 7:32 PM
A petaflop sounds like a bad thing.
8. Code - June 10, 2008 7:35 PM
Seriously what a waste of a good petaflop. It should be doing more important things, like playing a petaflop build of Worms Armageddon.
9. pdrunk - June 10, 2008 7:48 PM
Let's play Global. Thermal. Nuclear War.
(enter)
10. Brandon - June 10, 2008 8:20 PM
@Pdrunk
I've been waiting for someone to make a War Games reference.
11. Cambaprecoz - June 10, 2008 8:35 PM
Oh God, I can see all now, Robots rebel when this machine launches a surprise rape to all our nations, the come the radiation-caused Zombies!
ZOMG!!! We're doomed!
12. J - June 11, 2008 2:00 AM
This supercomputer might have just enough power to run Adobe Flash and not have the CPU usage at 99%. I still have my doubts about it being able to run Windows Vista though.
13. guate6 - June 11, 2008 3:14 AM
#6: my thoughts exactly.
#9: nicely put.
#12: hahaha
Well folks, in less than twenty years, some people will think it's funny to name their company Skynet in reference to the Terminator movies, and lo and behold, they will end up doing the exact same damn thing. I hope Arnie's still in good health to terminate the problem.
14. MS - June 11, 2008 4:21 AM
Just one measly petaflop?
Seriously, one of anything sounds so little. "One thousand trillion calculations per second" seems much more!
15. The Imaginary Reviewer - June 11, 2008 8:41 AM
And I thought a Petaflop was what an animal rights campaigner does off a diving board...
16. poop - June 11, 2008 10:13 AM
uhhh.. ...what if somebody just unplugged it?
i'm afraid the alkayduh is gonna steal it and use it again't my folks over here at the farm. but we can't have no problems with them this week, 'cause we got to get over to the sears and get the mower blades replaced what was recalled and all.
17. Momboelitist - June 11, 2008 10:22 AM
Big deal, I can make toasted cheese sandwiches....all day long!
18. boredom - June 11, 2008 10:44 AM
yeah but does it have a touch screen AND 3G AND GPS, no it doesn't? Then it's not as good as the IShit 2.0....
sorry I thought EVERY article on every gadget/geek website HAD to have an IPhone reference in it this week
19. Kirk - June 11, 2008 11:34 AM
wow.
I was 50% sure it would be named Skynet.....or WOPR (if anyone gets this early '80s reference, I applaud you).
oh well. Better re-start building the bomb shelter.
20. Momboelitist - June 11, 2008 12:36 PM
"(if anyone gets this early '80s reference, I applaud you)."
@19, looks like you are new around here as we bow down to our future robot overlords almost daily at geekologie.
21. Ramon M. - June 11, 2008 3:15 PM
The end is nigh...
Skynet is coming.
22. Steve - June 11, 2008 4:13 PM
Why is it that these supercomputers are never built with top of the line super chips? Dual core Opterons? What is that gayness about? A few years ago called and it wants its shitty chips back. ZING!
Anyway, why the f*** do they need to spend $100 million on a massive supercomputer to keep the USAs nukes safe? Try locking that shit and changing the password from "password". Common sense FT-dub!
23. B Square - June 12, 2008 11:03 AM
Perhaps we could use this monster computor for something good... I dunno crazy idea but perhaps solve the energy crisis? O... How about a cancer cure?
24. guate6 - June 12, 2008 6:18 PM
#22: Really? Well, here goes: AMD Opeteron Dual cores are the industry standard. In order to become the industry standard, the product has to be tested for several years and checked for reliability, durability, longevity, and maximum output (I excel in all of these categories). So yes, while there are quad cores out and octa-cores out and what not, the AMD opterons are what major companies use since they are awesome.
25. JS - June 13, 2008 1:11 AM
So, according to the cnn story (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/09/fastest.computer.ap/index.html): "if every one of the 6 billion people on Earth used a hand-held computer and worked 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day." Either we've got some networking problems with these devices or cnn's idea of a handheld device is an abacus, 'cause I think that works out to a bit less than 10 hertz. Gotta love media reports on science and technology.