RoadRunner, the world fastest supercomputer
A US military supercomputer has broken the petaflop speed record by performing one thousand trillion calculations per second. The ‘Roadrunner’ machine was developed at the Los Alamos Laboratory and uses AMD Opteron chips and the Cell processors found in PlayStation games consoles. It will be used to model climate systems before being classified by the Army to work on nuclear explosion modelling. “We replace our high-performance supercomputers every four or five years,” said Andy White, leader of supercomputer development at Los Alamos.
“They become outdated in terms of speed, and the maintenance costs and failure rates get too high.” White explained that the use of two kinds of chips represents a revolution in supercomputing. ‘Roadrunner’ uses fewer than 20,000 processors while the next fastest computer, IBM’s Blue Gene/L, uses over 200,000 and runs at half the speed. The Los Alamos machine uses 7,000 multi-core Opteron processors and parses the data to 12,960 enhanced Cell processors using 57 miles of fibre-optic cabling. The device consumes three megawatts of power, enough to run 1,000 homes. Damn, can you imagine encoding a movie on such a machine? It would be done within few miliseconds. Warez scene dream. 
Source: Vnunet
Comments(92)
Yes, but can it run CRYSIS on full settings?
i have this in my place! Don’t believe? Come and see with your very eyes!!!
xD
FU*K me thats power. i wander wat os they are using
DOS4 most likely
i run CRYSIS on full setting , i got a gtx8800 4 gb ram and xeon processor …. looks so sweat on my 40″ lcd on the wall
great. what’s the price?
OMG i want that
for 1,000,000 £ you can have it.
cheap, isn’t it?
I doubt it’s that cheap.
i bet those supercomputers could completely destroy rlslog in a matter of seconds
Wow design a car that gets 100 mpg and make it affordable then i will be impressed
i did not pay tax too, so i saved a lot of money that way..computer is around £1000 not including hard disks lcd was £700 and CRYSIS….. well free; was download lol
What does it run on? Windows Millennium ?
sample screenies dosent work
lol @ 1 million euros…
cell processors run at 100 bucks and opterons they use at 150
add the racks, memory etc… you’re looking at 50+ million
and the power bill must run them at a couple million a year
its an IBM machine, the built it for the US goverment, its will be used for national security and also such things as geology etc etc
Uhm… I don’t get it… Supercomputer… Isn’t it more or less “just” customized computer clusters?
Anyway, lol @ justa:G
ha! take that Xbox
woot AMD FTW…..
where is your god now intel fanboys
I want one!
is there any video of this?
I want to play Age of Conan on that computer!
Probably AMD is so desperated that they gave those CPU’s for free to let everyone hear which company US chose hehe. Seriously, AMD Opteron might have something good that helps such big cluster work at highest efficiency. And THE CELL, it’s good CPU but hard to develop programs on it as it’s different “structure” than x86. Anyway i like such news in rlslog hehe
hey brainless kids…
supercomputers is not for gaming, and games is not only matter nor only thing worth enough to buy best/fastest/highest_price computer…
get a life, nerds…
wonder how fast can it crack rar archive.
lol at the AMD guy.. its not even a dispute anymore, intel is better. costs maybe 10% more for 30% more speed
I want to use that for my renders.
Oh BTW,
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What do they do with the ones they had been using?
I want that in my basement.
That Computer is for noobs!
…Well isn’t that what everyone on here says about every computer going normally?:-)
Stelletje mietjes ^^
<5 My system is a bit faster than yours by and cannot run Crysis maxed. I call bulls**t
My school Laptop could run Crysis on max, but then again im in school for rendering alot of stuff and got a sick expensive lap top. Anyways i hope the next Xbox has processors like this, its the only way its going to get any hotter or louder then the 360….
@Martin – Encoding movies would require more than pure CPU power, each machine would need their own VPU(s) aswell. The largest of which is owned by Pixar and was built in 2003.
http://www.hoise.com/primeur/03/articles/monthly/AE-PR-03-03-46.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetwilitekid/85940485/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetwilitekid/85940484/in/photostream/
The machines, on top of the Xeons, have QUAD GeForce 8800 GTXs with a special OS to support them coded by Intel (was originally made by Sun). Now THAT thing would own for encoding.
I wonder how would MS Word run on these things.
Halo3 is definately better than that.
lol…now thats a computer!
@36 Or notepad for that matter
Yeah yeah. One day that thing will be the size of a postage stamp. Happened before, will happen again
@41 hahaha so true, give em 50 years and my fridge will be runnin on one of those
Anyone know if Circuit City has these in stock……..
@34 you wish the next XboX to have a last generation processor? the CBE is already used in the PS3 and AMD opertons wouldn’t be ideal for Console use, however I hope the PS3 uses the next version of the Cell B roadband Engine which has more robust specs than the original CBE.
Yes, I know if Circuit City have these in stock……..
AMD Nuff said……. It must really suck!
Can we play Pong on that thing ?
Thats all fine and dandy, but can it run crysis?
@25 or R1pper
Wow, I feel like the incredible Hulk!,
More Speed Captain MORE SPEED!
ok too much speeed. STOP!!!!! I … CAN’T….
TAKE….. IT!!!!!!!!!
DONE: 8 multi Character Password cracked in less than a day
Next Please
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opteron
AMD launched quad core Opteron chips on September 10th, 2007
On the November 2007 TOP500 list, 15.8% of the world’s 500 fastest known supercomputer installations were AMD64 Opteron-based systems (down from 22.6% on 11/06), while 64.4% were Intel ia32e/EM64T/Intel 64 Xeon-based.
Supercomputers based on Opteron mentioned in the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world:
It runs on Red Hat.
Stupid americans why would you need the biggest supper computer. This computer is pure ego why else would you take cheap hardware to build a cluster. There are way better and less power hungry chips in the world then AMD Opteron chips and Cell processors. And not just intel there is more in world then mainstream. Beacusse they use these rather cheap hardware componends they only prove this cluster is for a person with a big ego. C’mon people it’s 2008 quality is more important then quantity.
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BAD RLSLOG. BAD.
@11 I here that all this technology and were worried about nuclear bombs. What happens when I can’t afford to drive down the street…
“can it run CRYSIS on full settings?”
Everyone nows that the answer is… NO.
Why? The directx software driver from DX10 or DX9 is damn slow, and only uses one core! So the the speed of Crysis full settings on that computer will be about 1 frame every 5 seconds…
Sorry, this is reality….
so where do i download a copy of this new supercomputer, any rapidshare links. :S
but seriously im gonna start stealing peoples ps3’s and rob a few pc worlds for some INTEL’s and make an even more powerful one with a few less wires.
Try opening a PDF with adobe and it still CRAWLS
Skynet is born!
You’re worried about running Crysis?!
This is ‘War Games’ the live-real life-real time version. *points to description* See, where it says “Nuclear modelling”. I’d think that meant differently if not for “Army” instead of “Physicists”. Great, with commenting on RLSLog & my unpatriotic sentiments I see that laser satellite is turning towards my home. Goodbye cruel world! RIAA & SPA will be happy…
Wow, I guess the ’scene’ can’t produce people who know anything about processors or operating systems.
I’ll wait until they dismantle it and AXXO re-builds it…..will be a lot smaller and better then…..
^^^ LOL !!! (All of it) Keep it Up Guys!
#58
superaktieboy
June 9th, 2008 | 22:46
Skynet is born!
————-
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!
how many latinos do they have to kill to build this computer?
looks like my grandfathers print shop
When this one gets redundant the boss takes it home to replace his furnace.
Jeez imagine how hot 7000 amd chips all overheating at once is gonna be.
Now that would make a great seedbox.
@ 61.sybull
“I’ll wait until they dismantle it and AXXO re-builds it…..will be a lot smaller and better then…..”
Thanx for the laugh.:)
On another note, what OS the ‘Roadrunner’ runs on and is that compatible with Crysis. I mean really various OS version that take full power of hardware and code written for them. Ranging from firmware,bios,FSB,HyperTransport (1,1.1,2,3), Chipset (ATI, NIVDIA, INTEL, AMD, REALTEK,ETC…) too. Thats the questions i would ask. lol
But anywayz thanx sybull. You made me laugh:)
Will this work with a Mac?
It probably doesn’t run on any operating system its probably all custom build and internal. I have a friend that hires out supercomputing to private firms and the fact is all the run are dummy terminals. So if anything it will run Linux or a customised version of Linux.
lol @ 60.sybull
WOW ill have to have a wank now.
Honestly I think that in the current socio-economic climate that this is wasteful. I think that if technology wasn’t (firstly) repressed by government(s) for the sake of our/others “security”, and also limited by the potential for capital gain….that we would have clean/renewable energy, and technology would be a lot farther along- but alas capitalism/government holds us back.
IE- they could have wireless technology FAR beyond what it is now…but the FCC (whom is influenced by big business and who else knows) won’t free up the frequencies without lengthy arguments/petitioning…therefore delaying the inevitable reality of free phone calls with de-centralized P2P-type technology. Thats just a small example (maybe not the best even, but I hope you get my point)
Not worth it, can’t get max FPS on Putt Putt Adevntures.
can it crack 1028 bit encryption? I bet thats what its intended goal is……
@74
that will depend on which encryption algorithm was used in the first place.
–
“The ‘Roadrunner’ machine was developed at the Los Alamos Laboratory and uses AMD Opteron chips” – yay for AMD!
India’s got the world’s fourth fastest Supercomputer (http://www.megaleecher.net/Indian_SuperComputer) clocking at 117.9 TFlop/s, I guess it should be now on fifth place.
nuclear explosion modelling
just WOW……………..
Just imagine Nagasaki modeled in 3D and imagine the power of the computer to calculate how much time the last tree will be exploded by the nuclear reaction, the tree next to the motorcycle
but why they need to model that and spend all this money… maybe this supercomputer will take care of managing the microchip that US government want to implement in each citizen s body so you don’t need a passport or a credit card or cash with you….
this US government’s really crazy more than the hollywood movies show it
XP SP3 kicks its ass!!!
My guess is that it runs on XP 64-bit.
But come on! You guys that make those supercomputers, check out new GPU’s next time. Here you have an article to check:
http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=773884 (Norwegian)
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digi.no%2Fphp%2Fart.php%3Fid%3D773884&hl=no&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en (translated to English)
well i want it,but i don’t think i got the income to support such a beast,,i can confirm it CAN run crysis on full setting,as they are using the cry engine to do the nuclear explosion modelling believe it or not.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/227807.html
sadly marcelli was in charge of the maths algo for the nuke simulation and the supercomputer gave the answer as 22.5%
Wow! Nuclear bombs……..they have no other things to do than make nuclear bomb simulation.
How about they give us some other simulation than war sims.
I’d like to overclock one. =\
Wow, how excellent. So now they can run benchmark tests on it all day. Hope they put in a nice Graphics cards.
according to wikipedia, it cost $133 million and runs Red Hat Linux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Roadrunner
The wiki link surprised me, I was sure it would be running a clustering OS, either one of the existing ones, or a proprietary one, not RedHat.
Its times like these that make me a proud employee of the big blue.
Hand that machine to Microsoft. They’ll develop a new bloatware application that will make the machine crawl.
MS Office 2009 !!
In ten years it will be on Ebay for $5.99 Buy It Now! Can’t wait!
LOL @5! Does it look so sweat that it makes you sweet? And yeah isn’t there a better application for this than a nuke? Weather modeling is fine, but come on. No need for a nuke model. Here’s the outcome modeled by me…nuke=death.
Folding @ home already beat 1 petaflop of calculations like a year ago.
“In early May, 2008 the project attained a sustained performance level higher than two petaFLOPS, again being the first computing system of any kind to do so.” >> Wikipedia
So a community open source project has beaten the US military supercomputer. By the way not just beaten it, F@H does 2x as many calculations. Thats impressive.
pfft supercomputer, why waste all that money. The US military could have spent the money on developing their own client to just run on all government/military PCs and im sure they could have beaten their own supercomputer. Plus it would have be much cheaper then changing supercomputers every 3-4years. What a waste of US dollars.
The scene totally needs to hijack this.