SUPERCOMPUTERS HELP MODEL WEATHER
AND CLIMATE
By 2010 supercomputers could be carrying out more than 1,000 trillion
calculations per second. The ambitious goal has been set by the US Government
to help its scientists tackle problems that would otherwise take too long to
simulate.
Venerable supercomputer maker Cray has declared its aim of being the first
to
reach the goal and has embarked on a long-term research programme to make the
machines that will finish the job.
Cray has already unveiled the first machine, the X1, that it hopes will be
a
stepping stone to the petaflop calculation goal. The processors inside the X1
can carry out more than 12.8 billion calculations per second. One billion
calculations per second is known as a gigaflop.
New problems require new computers
Clusters of X1 machines bring together up to 1,048 processors and a peak
performance of more than 12,000 gigaflops -- still far short of the ultimate
goal. Steve Scott, spokesman for Cray, said there was still a pressing need to
create dedicated supercomputers, despite the success many people have had
using the idle processor time of thousands of desktop PCs.
He said although such grid clusters of PCs could tackle some problems,
there
were many others that could only be satisfactorily tackled with stand-alone
supercomputers.
"As computers get faster, the problems that used to require supercomputers
now
can be solved on cheaper platforms," he said. "But there are always new
problems that can't be solved on your PC."
Mr Scott said tasks such as simulating the effects of car crashes on the
human
body, discovering new drugs, modelling protein folding and predicting climate
change will all require petaflop computing.
"Designing a supercomputer to handle trillions of calculations per second
involved more than just fast computer chips. The whole system had to be
optimised to ensure that all the processors in the system were being used all
the time and could continuously crunch through lots of numbers," he said.
Following the X1, Cray is working on a machine called the Black Widow which
it
hopes to unveil around 2005. Following that will be the machine it hopes will
break the petaflop barrier.
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