PS3 Cell-powered Roadrunner rated king in Top 500 Supercomputers list
For the second time running (no pun intended), the Department of Energy’s Cell-powered Roadrunner system has once again claimed the top spot in the Top 500 Supercomputers list.
Oh, you’d think the Large Hadron Collider would have made an impact (again, no pun intended) on the list, but nooo, the PS3 chip’s advanced – and slightly hybrid-ized – brother is leaving the rest of the competition in the dust.
The Department of Energy’s Cell-powered Roadrunner has, for the second time running (err, no pun intended), claimed the top spot in the Top 500 Supercomputers list.
Oh, you’d think the Large Hadron Collider would have made an impact (again, no pun in tended) on the list, but nooo, the PS3 chip’s advanced – and slightly hybrid-ized – brother is leaving the rest of the competition in the dust.
If you’re not familiar with the Roadrunner, it’s a supercomputer roosting in the nests of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Built with an advanced version of the PS3’s Broadband Cell processor, this baby can run on the petaflop level in its peak (one petaflop is a quadrillion flops per second – or one thousand trillion flops per second). Just think of a “1” followed by lots of zeroes.
The Top 500 Supercomputers list is published twice a year. It was back in June 2008 that the Roadrunner first got its grand laurels in the list. It’s to be noted that since its first crown, the Roadrunner has been upgraded. It’s now billed as not only the most powerful supercomputer, but also one of the most energy efficient systems in the entire list (which you can check out via the Source link below).
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