How to buld a supercomputer

[Gob]

The Fujitsu Primergy cluster high-performance supercomputer was constructed at the National Computational Infrastructure in late 2012. Located at The Australian National University, the machine has:

57,000 cores = 15,000 home PC’s
160 terabytes of RAM = 40,000 home PC’s
10 petabytes of hard disc = 10,000 PC hard drives
1,200 teraflops of peak computational performance = 5 months worth of calculations by 1 billion people armed with calculators, in just 1 second.
9 terabyes of network = 9 million home internet bandwidth connections

Debuting at #24 on the world in the Top500 list of best supercomputers, the HPC is constructed based on the technology developed for the ‘K’ computer in Japan, which was until recently the world’s fastest computer.

NCI’s advanced computing infrastructure is funded through programs of the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, while its operations are sustained through the substantial co-investment by a number of partner organisations including ANU, CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia, a number of Australia’s research-intensive universities, and the Australian Research Council.

Fujitsu is the world’s third largest IT Services Company, and has over 40 years of history in developing Supercomputing technology.

[Daisy]

But can you play Tetris on it?

[MajGenl.Meade]

The world needs more buldings.

[oldr_n_wsr]

How much good is it in a blackout? (aka Sandy)

[Sean]

But can you play Tetris on it?

It's called a supercomputer because Freecell comes with an extra 5 games and it's biggest Minesweeper grid is 60 x 40.

[Scooter]

Is there a point at which building a computer that is bigger, faster, more powerful nothing more than a geek's version of a dick measuring contest?

[Crackpot]

depends what you're processing

[oldr_n_wsr]

I think there is a need for high computation computers for modeling (earth weather) and such. AI testing is another use. But man will always strive for the best/fastest so it will continue ad infinum.

[dales]

Is there a point at which building a computer that is bigger, faster, more powerful nothing more than a geek's version of a dick measuring contest?

In that case I got a 286.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Is there a point at which building a computer that is bigger, faster, more powerful nothing more than a geek's version of a dick measuring contest?

In that case I got a 286.

Hex or decimal?