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Intel%squots Supercomputer Sets Performance Record

Over 7,000 Pentium Pro CPUs push giant computer to 1 trillion operations per second.

By Michael Desmond, PCWorld   

Comparing the achievement to the breaking of the sound barrier, Intel executives say that the Teraflops Computer opens up heady computing frontiers, such as weather prediction, gene mapping, oil exploration, and simulated nuclear weapons testing. The previous performance mark was 328.2 gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second).

Surprisingly, the record of 1.06 teraflops was set using the same 200-MHz Pentium Pro CPUs found in many business desktop PCs. Never mind that it took 7,264 of the processors, tightly coupled over a network occupying nearly 1,800 square feet of space, to achieve the mark. The Teraflops Computer even has room to grow: Once the maximum 9,200 CPUs are installed, Intel and Sandia engineers expect the supercomputer to achieve a sustained rate of 1.4 teraflops. Behind all the processors are 573GB of system memory, 2.25 terabytes of disk storage, and about 2 miles of cabling. The whole mess weighs about 44 tons and chews up 850 kilowatts of power at peak operation.

Rocket scientists and brain surgeons may be licking their lips in anticipation, but what about the rest of us? Believe it or not, this computing behemoth may actually affect our workaday lives. Intel hopes that the Teraflops Computer%squots modular design, built around industry-standard Pentium Pro CPUs, will allow corporations to use the architecture for applications such as airline reservation systems and computerized banking. The competition, meanwhile, is not too far behind. Cray Research claims that its top-of-the-line Cray T3E-900 supercomputer will rattle off up to 1.8 teraflops, and Fujitsu should break the teraflops mark soon as well. Desktop PCs will take a little longer to catch up: Intel estimates that the new supercomputer is more than 10,000 times more powerful than Pentium-based desktop systems.