A Penguin in the Orchard

Simulating Earth

The world’s fastest computer was crowned again yesterday. According to CNN:

The Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan, performs 35.86 trillion calculations per second — more than 4 1/2 times greater than the next-fastest machine.

Earth Simulator, built by NEC and run by the Japanese government, first appeared on the list in June. It was the first time a supercomputer outside the United States topped the list.

There aren’t any details on the operating system. A computer build by Linux NetworX and Quadrics for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ranked number five.

35,860,000,000 instructions per second. That’s 35,860 BogoMIPS. Can you imagine the cooling fans?

[De-Geeking sign #56 - You understand and can calcuate BogoMIPS.]