Computer will do 1000 trillion operations a second

[BERIGAN]

Computer 'will do 1000 trillion operations a second'

Date: November 18 2003

Battelle Memorial Institute says it is building the world's fastest supercomputer.

The machine, expected to be capable of 1000 trillion operations per second when completed in 2008, is being built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Columbus-based Battelle, the world's largest independent, nonprofit research organisation, manages Oak Ridge and three other laboratories for the US Department of Energy.

Battelle said the computer would be 300 times faster than a similar computer in Japan, called Earth Simulator, which can perform 35.8 trillion operations per second.

"That's a $US500 million [$696.33 million] machine," said William Madia, executive vice-president for laboratory operations and former Oak Ridge director.

The supercomputer represents the direction of American science in the next two decades, Mr Madia said.

"Half of today's [gross national product] comes from investing in science - not science for science's sake, but for economic development," he said.

Ohio State University and Battelle will use the machine to join forces. The university wants to be a leader in biomedical research and to use Battelle's expertise at finding commercial applications for new technology.

Among the collaborations at Ohio State are nanotechnology - designing devices on a molecular scale - and biomedical informatics, which uses supercomputers to clarify and interpret huge amounts of medical data.

The supercomputer will also enable scientists to model world weather patterns or research black holes.

"We need faster and faster and bigger and bigger, but it's not just the raw speed," said Anil Pradhan, a physicist in the OSU Astronomy Department. "The ability of a supercomputer to load huge amounts of data rapidly is just as important."

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2003/1...9027044760.html

[Rooster_Ties]

Yeah, but by the time whatever the most recent version of Windows is by then, that version of Windows will be such bloatware that we'll all need this fancy new "fastest computer in the world" just to run it!!!

[Jim Alfredson]