New Atlas

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World's fastest supercomputer will heat up race to the exascale era

Michael Irving May 8, 2019

Supercomputers will take a huge leap forward when the “exascale” era kicks off in 2021 with the launch of Aurora. But now it looks like that world-leading machine will be usurped before it’s even set up. The Frontier system has been announced, which will boast the power of over 1.5 exaflops.

The Frontier system will be the world's fastest supercomputer, boasting the power of 1.5 exaflops

Computers Audio available

Intel's next-gen supercomputer to usher in exascale era in 2021

Michael Irving March 18, 2019

Intel and the US Department of Energy will deliver the world’s first exascale supercomputer in 2021, boosting many different fields of research. Named Aurora, the new system will be a thousand times more powerful than the petascale generation that began in 2008 and is still in wide use today.

Intel's new supercomputer, named Aurora, will be the first of a new generation of exascale systems ...

Computers

Million-core neuromorphic supercomputer could simulate an entire mouse brain

Dario Borghino November 6, 2018

After 12 years of work, researchers at the University of Manchester in England have completed construction of a "SpiNNaker" (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) supercomputer. It can simulate the internal workings of up to a billion neurons through a whopping one million processing units.

A newly built supercomputer is able to simulate up to a billion neurons in real time, ...

Computers

World's most powerful supercomputer handles staggering 200,000 trillion calculations per second

David Szondy June 9, 2018

The the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has unveiled a machine capable of handling a staggering 200,000 trillion calculations per second (200 petaflops).

Summit is eight times more powerful than its predecessor

Computers

Supercomputing gets more affordable with a little help from Pi

Paul Ridden November 27, 2017

Supercomputers are typically huge and expensive, and they take an awful lot of power to run. Looking for a cheaper way allow developers to build and test high performance computer system software, LANL turned to the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi and Australia's BitScope.

Computers

Scientists sprinkle "magic dust" of light and matter for faster supercomputers

Michael Irving September 26, 2017

Supercomputers and quantum computers rely on a “brute force” approach to solve problems, performing billions of calculations very quickly until they arrive at the optimal solution. But a new system has the potential to outperform them, using “magic dust” as a beacon to highlight the solution.

Computers

HP unleashes "The Machine" memory-centric supercomputer prototype

Michael Irving May 16, 2017

To keep up with a constant flood of data, computer makers have thrown more processing cores at the problem. Forging a different path, HPE has overhauled the architecture itself to put memory at the center of the system, showcasing it through a prototype it calls The Machine.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has unveiled a computer prototype it calls The Machine, which uses a completely ...

Computers

Latest rankings show US and China tied on supercomputer count

Michael Irving November 15, 2016

Twice a year, the Top500 list outlines the world’s most powerful supercomputers, and the US has always held the most units in that list until it was beaten by China in June. With the latest rankings this week, the US and China are now tied for 171 systems each within the top 500.

The Sunway TaihuLight in China has claimed the top spot in the Top500 list of the ...

Computers

Home PC outperforms a supercomputer in complex calculations

Michael Irving June 30, 2016

Russian physicists have put a computer running a consumer-level Nvidia GPU to work on equations that are normally performed using a powerful supercomputer, and found that the home PC solved them in 15 minutes – far faster than the supercomputer’s time of two or three days.

$Scientists have used a consumer-level Nvidia GPU to solve some incredibly complex equations in a fraction ...$

Computers

Homegrown Chinese supercomputer claims world number one ranking

Colin Jeffrey June 21, 2016

Equipped with 10,649,600 computing cores and capable of carrying out some 93 quadrillion calculations per second, the world's fastest supercomputer has just been announced: Twice and fast and three times as efficient as its nearest rival

The Sunway TaihuLight is equipped with 10,649,600 computing cores and is capable of carrying out some ...