supercomputer

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China Overtakes US With Fastest Supercomputer

New system 'blows away' US best

(Newser) - A new Chinese supercomputer is the fastest in the world, able to perform mathematical operations much faster than the previous record-holder, a US system in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The system, Tianhe-1A, was recently subjected to the tests that serve as a benchmark for supercomputer rankings, reports the New York Times...

Through Sheer Power, Google Translate Gets It Right

Similar programs use 1B words, while Google plugs in 100B+

(Newser) - Score one for Google’s “don’t be evil” side as Web surfers reap the benefits of its excellent translation program—thanks to the sheer force of Google's web dominance. Machine translation is a particularly tricky computer problem that programmers now agree is most easily solved by feeding massive...

Scientist Smashes Pi Record
 Scientist Smashes Pi Record 
3.14159265...

Scientist Smashes Pi Record

He calculates number to 2.7 trillion digits on his home PC

(Newser) - A French scientist shattered the record for calculated digits of Pi, working the number out to 2.7 trillion decimal places—and he did it with a home PC. Fabrice Bellard beat the previous record by 100 billion digits, using a new software algorithm he claims is 20 times faster...

Artificial Brain Could Be Just 10 Years Away

(Newser) - A functional artificial brain could be built within the next decade, leading scientist and brain-builder Henry Markram told a tech conference. Markram, who leads a project seeking to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from lab data, says his team has already duplicated parts of the rat brain, the BBC reports....

Supercomputers Supercharge Research

Scientists with big questions to benefit more from DOE's two behemoths

(Newser) - It's easier than ever before to get some quality time with one of the most powerful computers on Earth. The Department of Energy has increased the performance of two of its supercomputers more than fivefold, making 900 million processor-hours available to scientists, reports Wired. Expect that boost to lead to...

Quantum Internet Gets Closer
Quantum Internet
Gets Closer

Quantum Internet Gets Closer

New kind of Net would be automatically secure

(Newser) - 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...

IBM Creates a Cooler Supercomputer
IBM Creates a Cooler Supercomputer

IBM Creates a Cooler Supercomputer

Chilled water reduces energy needs for a more powerful machine

(Newser) - 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,...

Sun Banks on Lasers to Make Next Speed Leap

Using light, not wires, to connect chips could make computers 1,000 times faster

(Newser) - 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...

Quantum Computing Works in Experiment

Atomic-level computer could change world

(Newser) - 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...

Supercomputing Technology Landing in Your Lap(top)

Hardware getting smaller as software tries to catch up

(Newser) - 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...

New 'Petascale' Computers Will Speed Up Science

Machines accelerate advances in climate change, geology, drug development research

(Newser) - 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...

Supercomputers From Germany, India Chase IBM

New rankings keep Blue Gene at No. 1, but upstarts are gaining

(Newser) - 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...

World's Fastest Computer on the Fast Track

New machine will be three times as powerful as current champ

(Newser) - 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...

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