
IBM joins with University of Toronto to create Canada\'s most powerful supercomputer. Image: Martin Kingsley/Flickr.
New York-based International Business Machines (IBM) may be the proud owner of Roadrunner, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, but the technology giant is currently sharing the processing love by shifting its considerable know-how north of the border to help the University of Toronto engineer a hulking new supercomputer.
While unlikely to emerge as a contender to Roadrunner’s dominance, the machine currently being developed by IBM and the University of Toronto’s SciNet Consortium is expected to push 360 trillion calculations per second, making it Canada’s most powerful supercomputer.
According to the SciNet Consortium, which also includes associated Canadian hospitals, the as-yet unnamed supercomputer will apparently be the largest located outside of the Unites States, offering performance some 30 times faster than Canada’s current front-running supercomputer. The consortium also notes the machine will rank in the top 20 on the global stage.
Built on IBM’s recently launched iDataPlex system, the upcoming Canadian supercomputer will benefit from being able to double the number of processors per computer server rack, while the computer will utilise more than 4,000 linked servers, reports CBC.
In terms of projected performance, IBM Canada’s strategic initiatives executive, Chris Pratt, outlined to The Washington Post that the supercomputer will be the equivalent of “30,000 to 40,000 home computers linked together.”
Set to see the University of Toronto leap forward to become a premier computational research institution on the international stage, the supercomputer is expected to be used to tackle research related to climate change prediction, medial imaging, aerospace, astrophysics, and chemical physics.
One of the most high-profile scientific endeavours the supercomputer will likely be assigned to is the ATLAS project. The Canadian supercomputer could well contribute valuable research to the international particle physics investigation that will study the imminent collisions within the massive Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
According to IBM, the $50 million CAD ($47 million USD) supercomputer’s main systems are scheduled for operational completion in time for summer 2009. A dedicated data centre is to be built just north of Toronto in order to house the mammoth machine.
SaneScienceAug 15th, 2008 - 19:03:17
Man's technology has exceeded his grasp. - 'The World is not Enough'
Zealous Nobel Prize hungry Physicists are racing each other and stopping at nothing to try to find the supposed 'Higgs Boson'(aka God) Particle, among others, and are risking nothing less than the annihilation of the Earth and all Life in endless experiments hoping to prove a theory when urgent tangible problems face the planet. The European Organization for Nuclear Research(CERN) new Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is the world's most powerful atom smasher that will soon be firing subatomic particles at each other at nearly the speed of light to create Miniature Big Bangs producing Micro Black Holes, Strangelets and other potentially cataclysmic phenomena.
Particle physicists have run out of ideas and are at a dead end forcing them to take reckless chances with more and more powerful and costly machines to create new and never-seen-before, unstable and unknown matter while Astrophysicists, on the other hand, are advancing science and knowledge on a daily basis making new discoveries in these same areas by observing the universe, not experimenting with it and with your life.
The LHC is a dangerous gamble as CERN physicist Alvaro De Rújula in the BBC LHC documentary, 'The Six Billion Dollar Experiment', incredibly admits quote, 'Will we find the Higgs particle at the LHC? That, of course, is the question. And the answer is, science is what we do when we don't know what we're doing.' And CERN spokesmodel Brian Cox follows with this stunning quote, 'the LHC is certainly, by far, the biggest jump into the unknown.'
The CERN-LHC website Mainpage itself states: 'There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions,...' Again, this is because they truly don't know what's going to happen. They are experimenting with forces they don't understand to obtain results they can't comprehend. If you think like most people do that 'They must know what they're doing' you could not be more wrong. Some people think similarly about medical Dr.s but consider this by way of comparison and example from JAMA: 'A recent Institute of Medicine report quoted rates estimating that medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year in US hospitals.' The second part of the CERN quote reads '...but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator,...' A molecularly changed or Black Hole consumed Lifeless World? The end of the quote reads '...as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe.' These experiments to date have so far produced infinitely more questions than answers but there isn't a particle physicist alive who wouldn't gladly trade his life to glimpse the 'God particle', and sacrifice the rest of us with him. Reason and common sense will tell you that the risks far outweigh any potential(as CERN physicists themselves say) benefits.
This quote from National Geographic exactly sums this 'science' up: 'That's the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out.'
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