Titan supercomputer overtakes IBM Sequoia
Laurence Howe / 12 years ago
The Titan supercomputer has knocked the IBM Sequoia off the top spot to take the title of World’s Fastest Supercomputer. Those who move in the right kinds of circles won’t be surprised by this news; advance reports had apparently anticipated Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Titan would take the gold when the Top500 Supercomputer Sites’ twice-yearly top 500 supercomputer sites chart was released.
The Titan managed 17.59 Petaflop per second – that’s 17.59 quadrillion calculations per second and puts our ability to pat our heads and rub our tummies simultaneously to shame.
But knowing that the Titan has 560,640 processors to its name, including 261,632 Nvidia K20x accelerator cores, it’s pretty insane.
In June 2012, we reported that the IBM Sequoia was the world’s fastest supercomputer but it now sits in second place; the previous number 1,Fujitsu’s K computer, now languishes in third.
Not for the likes of you and I are the supercomputers housed in major computing laboratories; rather they are used to simulate nuclear weapons tests and other complicated scientific simulations.
Source: BBC
