Stories related to: supercomputers

A recent quantum computing breakthrough is a step towards creating a quantum Internet—which would be "automatically secure," a researcher told Technology Review . A Northwestern University professor has created a fundamental element of a quantum computer, a quantum logic gate, within an optical fiber, where previous gates used laser passing through air. This “could lead to distributed networks,” said one expert. More »

IBM has found a way to squeeze five times the performance out of a supercomputer at just 40% of the power. The newest version of the Power 575 draws chilled water into the computer and runs it through copper plates above processors to cool them, before expelling the heated water, reports CNet. This method reduces the need for air conditioning. More »

Sun Microsystems is moving toward connecting computer chips using lasers instead of wires, a move that could make computers 1,000 times faster. The company snagged a $44 million Pentagon contract to continue work that could also mean smaller, more energy-efficient machines. It won’t be easy, though: A Sun researcher told the New York Times the chance of success is 50%. More »

In theory, a quantum supercomputer would be insanely powerful. By manipulating atoms, quantum bits—qubits, for short—would never be definite 1s or 0s. Instead, they would be both at once, in theory allowing a device using them to solve nigh-impossible problems. That theory is getting closer to reality, Ars Technica reports. In recent as-yet-unpublished research, scientists report they've made a tiny two qubit computer. More »

Leaps forward in chip design are bringing supercomputing technology to personal computers and corporate data centers , Business Week writes. Hardware makers are coming up with more ways to cram colossal amounts of computing power into small spaces, but software is lagging a bit behind. Microsoft is building a brain trust in a bid to develop new applications. More »

A new generation of "petascale" supercomputers capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second—about twice the current standard—will start running next year, and the power could not only accelerate scientific discovery but also change the scientific method itself, the Washington Post reports. "We can now do as much scientific discovery with computational science as we could do before with observational science or theoretical science," one scientist notes. More »

Which supercomputer is the world's fastest? New rankings released today confirm that IBM's Blue Gene machine, developed for the US Department of Energy and equipped with over 200,000 processors, still holds the title. But whereas the Energy department owned the world's three fastest supercomputers only six months ago, upstarts around the world are catching up. More »

IBM is set to begin work on a computer capable of a quadrillion calculations per second, more power than a mile-high tower of laptops. McClatchy Newspapers reports the system will use 884,736 processors—six times the current best—to analyze problems on a dizzying scale. “We're on a path to a time when computers will be smarter than people,” one executive said. More »