For the first time since 2013, the United States is home to
the most powerful computer. The new supercomputer, called Summit, built for Oak
Ridge National Laboratory by IBM, is twice as fast as the previous record
holder at China's National Supercomputing Center.
According to the Oak Ridge lab, Summit has the processing
power of 200 petaflops (i.e. it can complete 200 quadrillion mathematical
equations per second) and houses a staggering amount of processing components, 9,216
processing chips made by IBM, and 27,648 graphics processors made by Nvidia, to
be exact. How fast is 200 petaflops? If a human completed one equation per
second, they would have to live for 6.3 billion years to complete the amount of
equations the machine is capable of in one just second.
The computer itself takes up a 9,250 square-foot room
composed of rows of units weighing 340 tons total. All of this power in one
place means that Summit needs 4,000 gallons of water per minute to be cooled,
and the electricity that keeps it running is enough to light 8,100 homes
A $200-million supercomputer, paid for by government grants,
will allow researchers in all fields of science unprecedented access to solving
some of the world’s most pressing computational challenges, with greater
complexity and higher fidelity, than ever before possible, from climate and
universe modeling, to questions concerning who we are, and our place on earth.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment