Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Inside the UK's fastest machine (guardian.co.uk)
4 points by theoneill on Jan 2, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


"It has cost GBP5.6m less than the GBP65m estimate to build" and "in computing terms that is the same as 12,000 standard desktop computers"

59.4 M / 12000 = GBP4,950 each. A good desktop computer is less than GBP1,000. It doesn't sound like a great buy.


interesting its number 17 in the top 500 list. I would wager that the government here in the uk has a couple bigger ones that they can't talk about. I bet the US has a few too.


The Top500 list refers to performance on the linpack benchmark. While the UK and US government probably have "more powerful" systems than this which are used for classified purposes, those are likely to be special-purpose designs which aren't able to run the linpack benchmark. (For example, the NSA has access to wafer fabrication facilities, and is believed to have several custom silicon designs.)

The linpack benchmark runs on general-purpose supercomputers, and non-classified supercomputers shared between a large number of researchers are inherently general-purpose supercomputers.


thanks, great bit of insight




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: