It’s official, Big Mac Ranked #3 in the world
The Big Mac supercomputer of Virginia Tech is now ranked 3rd fastest of all supercomputers.
Big Mac — the first supercomputer made of Macs — trails only Japan’s Earth Simulator and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s ASCI Q in the Top500, a list of the world’s 500 fastest machines.
The ranking will be unveiled Sunday at the opening of the Supercomputer Conference in Phoenix.
The machine, strung together from 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s, is the first supercomputer made from Macs. It is also one of the cheapest supercomputers ever made, costing a relatively modest $5.2 million. The Earth Simulator cost an estimated $350 million to $400 million.
The machine is capable of performing 10.28 trillion operations a second (teraflops). The Earth Simulator operates at about 35 teraflops.
A spokeswoman for Virginia Tech said the college’s next bargain supercomputer, due to begin construction in 2006, will be shooting for 50 teraflops.
Meanwhile, IBM is working on a monster supercomputer that will easily rank as the world’s fastest supercomputer when it comes online next year. Blue Gene/L will be capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second, or 360 teraflops.
I find it amazing how these supercomputer keep leapfrogging into position shooting for the #1 spot. IBM is working on several computers that will be up in the world’s top 10 fastest supercomputers. Here are the ones to watch for, ASCI Purple(100 teraflops), Wired Magazine