Number three on the list is a new machine, dubbed "X," built by Virginia Tech from 1,100 Apple G5 workstations with 2 GHz processors and delivering 10.3
teraflops of power.
The Asci Purple system, also based at Lawrence Livermore, has taken third position in the current list and the entry level for the top ten machines has risen to 20.53
teraflops from below ten
teraflops a year ago.
The prototype Blue Gene/L machine that IBM is showing off today will have 256 of these processors in a 21U half-rack, delivering 512 compute nodes (running at 500MHz instead of 700MHz) and a total of 2
teraflops of aggregate computing power.
Thinking Machines says that it is on schedule for a 1995 delivery of the world's first
teraflops computer.
The PX is also capable of handling the same number of sensors as the PX 2 but with the improved SoCs on the PX 2, the newer iteration boasts of 24
teraflops compared to the 2.3
teraflops that the PX was capable of.
Largest System in the Kyushu Region to Achieve Total Theoretical Peak Performance of 691.7
Teraflops using PRIMEHPC FX10 and PRIMERGY CX400
Acquired via a $9.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in September 2004, Big Ben -- the first XT3 system to ship from Cray -- comprises 2,090 processors with an overall peak performance of 10
teraflops: 10 trillion calculations per second.
It wasn't that long ago when a
teraflops of aggregate number-crunching power in a parallel supercomputer sounded like a lot.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recently announced that The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded IBM a contract valued at $216 to $267 million to build the two fastest supercomputers in the world with a combined peak speed of up to 467 trillion calculations per second (
teraflops).