NEC has just annouced the so-called world’s most powerful supercomputer, dubbed as SX-9. The SX-9 supercomputer features high-speed scientific computation system and ultra high speed processor. It’s best use for advanced weather forecasting, aerospace, fluid dynamics, environmental simulation and polymeric design.
Curious about how on earth the industry is measuring and comparing the power of supercomputer? The few participants in making supercomputers are NEC, Fujitsu and Hitachi from Japan and IBM, Intel and SGI from the United States. They are comparing and measuring the power of supercomputer in terms of gigaflops and teraflops. The NEC SX-9 is capable of calculating 839 teraflops — or 839 trillion floating point operations per second. This figure is now the highest among the rest. And NEC claims that they’ve sold more than 1,000 of the SX series.
Update: If you wonder how big this supercomputer is, the picture on the left shows you its actual size. It’s much taller than the lady who is standing next to it. Apparently, it’s not something meant for your work desk. Picture source
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