New Linux Supercomputer Reaches 42.7 Teraflops

Silicon Graphics and Nasa developed a new supercomputer cluster containing 10,240 Itanium 2 processors running on 20 SGI Altrix server platforms. Each box accommodates 512 processors. Using 16 of its 20 servers, the supercomputer achieved 42.7 trillion calculations per second (teraflops), topping NEC’s Earth Simulator, which is benchmarked at 35.8 teraflops, but trailing IBM's Blue Gene/L system, being assembled in Rochester, Minn., which was able to sustain a record speed of 70.72 teraflops after having been scaled up recently. NASA is planning to use the new supercomputer for compute intensive tasks, such as computer models of space shuttle launches and weather modeling applications, allowing it to predict a hurricane’s path up to three days earlier than before. For more information see here.