British Supercomputer Ready for Takeoff

By Doug Barney

The University of Edinburgh in Scotland has some serious horsepower to play with, and far more is on the way. The school recently announced that it has taken possession of a Cray XT4 supercomputer. This puppy can be souped up with as many as 120,000 AMD Opteron cores, and can peak at a petaflop. This is just stage one. Next year the University will get a Cray X2,  a system Cray claims is the “first integrated hybrid supercomputer.”

In 2009 the school is set to take hold of a massively parallel processor Cray machine. Sounds like the University of Edinburgh will have quite a lineup!

The Universityof Edinburgh isn’t exactly new to supercomputing. As we reported late last year, the school is working with several other institutions on nanowire technology that could result in a palm-size supercomputer.

I can see the processing engines getting that small, but what about the storage and IO? Is a supercomputer going to really rely on a tiny 80 gig iPod-style solid state drive? Don’t think so!