Daffodil International University
Science & Information Technology => Science Discussion Forum => Topic started by: poppy siddiqua on November 17, 2011, 12:52:26 PM
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Intel has developed an accelerator chip capable of running at speeds of one teraflop, equal to one trillion calculations per second.
The firm showed off the chip on a test machine at a supercomputing conference in Seattle.
Computer power on this scale is used to solve a range of problems in fields such as weather forecasting, molecular modelling and car crash simulations.
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The Knights Corner chip acts as a co-processor - taking over some of the most complicated tasks from the computers central processing unit (CPU).
It packs more than 50 cores - or individual processors - onto a single piece of silicon.
The chip offers "double precision" processing which allows a greater amount of numbers to be represented at one time - resulting in faster calculations and more accurate forecasts.
Intel says the accelerator is also the first server processor to support full integration of the PCI Express 3.0 specification. The technology allows data to be transferred at up to 32 gigabytes per second to compatible devices - twice the speed of the previous generation.
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Computer power has come a long way since 1997 when Intel showed off its first 1 teraflop supercomputer, which required nearly 10,000 Pentium II chips and filled 72 computing cabinets. It cost $55m.
In 2008, IBM's Roadrunner achieved petaflop speed, equal to 1,000 trillion calculations per second.
Ten years on, in 2018, Intel hopes it will be able to deliver so-called exascale-level performance, which is more than 100 times faster than currently available.
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My first PC had DX2-66Hz processor, 64MB RAM with 540MB HDD.
Then super computer's power is now available with desktop PC.
Both process speed and HDD capacity becomes almost double every year.
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Thanks for the informative post mam :)