[ubuntu-uk] Top 500 Supercomputers

[Tony Arnold]

Michael,

Michael Holloway wrote:
> Check this out, its quite interesting: www.top500.org
> 
> Of the top 500: 452 run on *nix based OS's, And a whopping 5 run the
> other one!

Yeah! When you have hundreds of processors all talking to each other
over some high bandwidth interconnect, *nix is the only way to do it!

> I just like reading the about the power these things have, and wish i
> could get that on my desktop PC!

You should see the figures for the power consumed and the heat generated
by these beasts. You would not want it on a desktop! Besides there are
very few computational problems that can take advantage of such powerful
machines.

> And you have to laugh... the most powerful computer in the world is an
> American nuke machine! What a surprise!

I believe they model nuclear explosions! It's better than testing the
real thing.

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold