Infrastructure Helping supercomputers stay super Howard Solomon @HowardITWC Published: November 22nd, 2012 (IBM’s BigGene supercomputer) Supercomputers have been around since the 1960s, at first powered by esoteric processors. Today they are run by the kind of multi-core CPUs found in common servers.According to the TOP500 list, the fastest computer in the world as of Nov. 12 was the Cray XK7, which uses 16-core AMD Opteron processors.But despite advances in CPUs, optical networking and other tricks, high performance computers have a weakness: Their size.Simply put, the more components in a supercomputer the greater the odds something will break.At the recent SC12 conference researchers discussed this problem, which is only going to get worse. Read the whole story here RELATED CONTENTA non-super chip for a supercomputer Intel ships Xeon Phi coprocessorSupercomputers help New Orleans cope Related Download Sponsor: LG LG Business Solutions New technologies can ease the burden on IT departments while enhancing productivity and satisfaction for the end users they serve. Learn More Infrastructure servers
