[g35er]

The new top supercomputer list has been released.

http://www.top500.org/news/articles/article_80.php

[suryad]

Yeah read about the fastest supercomputer a while back...damn that is fast!

[PC-Engine]

That's a huge achievement. That's a buttload of processors too. I've read that Japan is working on a 1 PETAFLOPS supercomputer that will be available in 2010.

[Moloch]

But how many FPS does it get in quake 4?

[pcchen]

Since it has 131,072 CPUs (0.7GHz PPC 440 variants), running at 1920x1080 @ 60Hz would require each CPU to render less than 1000 pixels per second. IMHO that would be possible to make a nice ray-tracing engine, probably with FSAA, for Quake 4 running on that machine for real time.

[Cartoon Corpse]

why didn't the post a 3dmark score?

what sorts of things are they using the rigs for?

[Moloch]

Originally Posted by pcchen

Since it has 131,072 CPUs (0.7GHz PPC 440 variants), running at 1920x1080 @ 60Hz would require each CPU to render less than 1000 pixels per second. IMHO that would be possible to make a nice ray-tracing engine, probably with FSAA, for Quake 4 running on that machine for real time.

Sweet

[bouy]

I believe these supercomputers being used by the gov't labs in the US are primarily simulating nuclear weapons explosions since the Permanent Test Ban Treaty. And because of our aging nuclear stockpile, we can't test to see if they still work and if they will dork decades from now. That's one reason I've heard.

Others range from Astronomers using it to plot motions of objects in space on a grand scale, weather prediction, and pretty much anything that has to be guesstimated that all of the world's mathematicians cannot do if they worked together.