[20-11-2006] Super Computer buffs meet in Tampa.
This month has seem the supercomputer fraternity meeting in Tampa, Florida, for their annual shindig - this year called SC06 (no surprise there). I've been following the proceedings for an number of years now, it's usually quite interesting, but suffers from what I call 'Linux on the desktop syndrome'. In the same way that every year this century it has been announced that the next year will be the year in which Linux comes to the desktop, SC06 is full of announcements that next year is the year in which we will finally see supercomputers under the desktop!
Maybe the two sides should get together, and we could have the year of Linux desktop on the under the desk supercomputer :)
In the meantime, if you want to get a flavour of the sort of stuff on offer at the show take a look at the URL at the end of this piece, which is about the Tyan Typhoon system, which comes in a 21 x 14 x 28 inch case you wheel under your desk. You can get something like 256 gigaflops (wonderful name for a measurement, that) out of the 40 Intel cores on a fully loaded box - wow, it's almost powerful enough to run Microsoft Vista!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/13/tyan_pcs_typhoon/
Maybe the two sides should get together, and we could have the year of Linux desktop on the under the desk supercomputer :)
In the meantime, if you want to get a flavour of the sort of stuff on offer at the show take a look at the URL at the end of this piece, which is about the Tyan Typhoon system, which comes in a 21 x 14 x 28 inch case you wheel under your desk. You can get something like 256 gigaflops (wonderful name for a measurement, that) out of the 40 Intel cores on a fully loaded box - wow, it's almost powerful enough to run Microsoft Vista!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/13/tyan_pcs_typhoon/