[Beowulf] Roadrunner shutdown

Hearns, John john.hearns at mclaren.com
Tue Apr 2 05:55:30 PDT 2013


It might also be an issue of problem size that you can grind on.  The top500 is about a particular metric.  Processor speeds, per se, haven't been going up as fast as say disk drive size/speed, or solid state drives, or interconnects, which have gotten more sophisticated.

> And, no, it's being sent to *north* Korea, where  it will bring the primitive electrical grid to its knees.<grin>

Its the Power Gap.

In the middle of the 20th Century we had nations competing by building and testing the biggest atomic weapons (*)
In the latter part of the 20th Century the Test Ban Treaty saw nations competing to build the fastest supercomputers to simulate those bombs.
In the early part of the 21st Century we have a power race - nations competing to see who can generate enough electricity to power these systems.

National pride is at stake here! Turn those lights off!



* Google 'Tsar Bomba'

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