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Hardware NEC Showcases World's Most Powerful Commercial Computer
Michael Hoffman (Blog) - October 28, 2007 11:56 AM

31 comment(s) - last by spluurfg.. on Oct 30 at 9:21 AM

NEC's latest supercomputer (Source: NEC)

NEC hopes its newest supercomputer will be able to compete with the fastest in the world

NEC last week began offering a new supercomputer the company claims will be able to challenge supercomputers from IBM and Cray. The new product will officially be unveiled during the iExpo2007 event in Reno, Nevada next month, with a public appearance scheduled for Tokyo later in the year.

The SX-9, according to NEC, is able to calculate a peak processing performance of 839 teralops - 839 trillion floating point operations per second. Its size is equivalent to an instant passport photo booth and will cost around $26,000 per month to rent. SX-9 will be about 13 times faster and have higher energy efficiency than its SX-8 predecessor, according to NEC.

"The SX-9 has been developed to meet the need for ultra-fast simulations of advanced and complex large-capacity scientific computing," NEC said in an official statement.

NEC has sold more than 1,000 supercomputers from the SX line of products. The company hopes to sell at least 700 SX-9 servers through 2010.

The IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the No. 1 supercomputer in the world. Supercomputing technology is quickly pushing the 1 petaflop level, with IBM working on Roadrunner, possibly the world's first publically acknolwedged 1 petaflop server. NEC has never had one of its supercomputers crack into the top 10 in global supercomputer rankings.

Supercomputers can be used for weather forecasting and other scientific functions, environmental simulation, aerospace simulators and fluid dynamics, along with nanotechnology research.

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Crysis

By Jjoshua2 on 10/28/2007 1:00:00 PM , Rating: 2

"$26,000 per month to rent" hmm. I wonder how fast that could run the new Crysis demo... too bad these machines all run some sort of linux or custom OS or something.

RE: Crysis

By James Holden on 10/28/2007 1:04:12 PM , Rating: 2

It can only run 800x600

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RE: Crysis

By hrah20 on 10/28/2007 4:32:00 PM , Rating: 2

but can it play Doom?

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RE: Crysis

By gtrinku on 10/28/2007 11:47:54 PM , Rating: 2

What are you talking about? EVERYTHING can play Doom. Haven't you seen those Nuon-enabled toasters around?

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RE: Crysis

By audiomaniaca on 10/29/2007 11:11:16 AM , Rating: 2

can I run 3dMax on it?

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RE: Crysis

By EndPCNoise on 10/29/2007 3:29:14 PM , Rating: 2

It's made up of several PS3's networked internally.

Users get BSOD (blue screen of death) while running Vista and transferring large numbers of files.

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RE: Crysis

By andrewsdw on 10/28/2007 1:06:14 PM , Rating: 2

Beat me to it...still funny.

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RE: Crysis

By Brockway on 10/28/2007 1:15:51 PM , Rating: 2

It still probably wouldn't crack 100fps average :p

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RE: Crysis

By imperator3733 on 10/28/07, Rating: 0

RE: Crysis

By lompocus on 10/28/07, Rating: 0

RE: Crysis

By BladeVenom on 10/29/2007 8:20:58 AM , Rating: 2

And that's why it can't crack 100fps.

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RE: Crysis

By Alexstarfire on 10/28/2007 3:12:22 PM , Rating: 3

Wonder how much it would cost to buy one?

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RE: Crysis

By spluurfg on 10/30/2007 9:21:35 AM , Rating: 2

I don't know, but until they make one with some plexiglass windows and laser etched fan grills with chrome spinners, I'm not going to be convinced that can dothe tera-mojo-flops per second I really need.

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RE: Crysis

By Flunk on 10/28/07, Rating: -1

RE: Crysis

By CK804 on 10/28/2007 5:34:44 PM , Rating: 4

Calm down dude. Haven't you ever heard of a joke before? Jeez...

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RE: Crysis

By cheetah2k on 10/29/2007 5:08:30 AM , Rating: 4

That guy's comment reminded me of Michael Douglas in "Falling Down" when he was at the Whammyburger joint and missed the breakfast menu by 2 minutes.

Chill dude!

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RE: Crysis

By audiomaniaca on 10/29/2007 11:39:41 AM , Rating: 2

Does it run 3dsmax?

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RE: Crysis

By DeepBlue1975 on 10/29/2007 9:02:29 AM , Rating: 2

We are a little bad humored today, aren't we?

The first post is obviously a joke...
A bad joke, and one of that kind I've certainly read hundreds of times below articles like this one.

You can dislike the joke and say it is a really lousy one, but you can not be so obtuse as to not tell it is a darn joke...

I guess bad humour is becoming epidemic here. I'd better get my self a vaccine for it.

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RE: Crysis

By Vim on 10/28/2007 5:34:17 PM , Rating: 2

I laughed. :)

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"NEC has never had one of its supercomputers crack into the top 10"

By mattsaccount on 10/28/2007 1:53:18 PM , Rating: 5

The Earth Simulator was built by NEC and was #1 for quite a stretch. Doesn't it count? Did I miss something? :)

RE: "NEC has never had one of its supercomputers crack into the top 10"

By Nehemoth on 10/28/2007 10:07:24 PM , Rating: 2

I was thinking the same

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Super computer...meh

By andrewsdw on 10/28/2007 1:03:12 PM , Rating: 3

This might beat me at chess but I would whoop it's @ss at checkers!

RE: Super computer...meh

By Jjoshua2 on 10/28/2007 1:11:58 PM , Rating: 3

Actually, did you know checkers has been solved? Chess still hasn't.

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Hmm....

By ZaethDekar on 10/28/2007 3:38:42 PM , Rating: 1

This is actually really awesome. 1 core running at 102.4 GFLOPS x 16 with up to 1TB of memory. Reminds me almost of: http://atomchip.com/

I can't wait for the computers to hit this normally.

RE: Hmm....

By Jkm3141 on 10/29/2007 12:07:34 AM , Rating: 3

I just have to call BS on that company. If you look at the bottem of this page, http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page3.html you will see it give information about its little 100GB SD card (2x50GB of course) and they say its "PATENT PANDING!". If you have a breakthrough as big as a 100GB SD card, you don't mis-spell the patent pending statement. You also have some real mainstream recognition.

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RE: Hmm....

By quickk on 10/29/2007 12:20:02 AM , Rating: 2

patent panding! That made me laugh out loud!

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NEC Has broken the Top 10 before...

By vaystrem on 10/28/2007 6:50:22 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
NEC has never had one of its supercomputers crack into the top 10 in global supercomputer rankings.

The article is not clear if its referring to performance or to marketshare. If it is referring to marketshare that may be the case, but regarding performance... (from www.top500.org)

An NEC Supercomputer held:
- the #8 spot in 2001
- The Number 1 Spot in 2002 through June of 2004 was held by the Earth Simulator -> http://www.top500.org/system/5628
- Earth Simulator remains the 4th most powerful supercomputer as of June 2007.

RE: NEC Has broken the Top 10 before...

By vaystrem on 10/28/2007 6:51:48 PM , Rating: 2

Mistake on my part - fell out of the top 10 as of November 2006.

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PS3

By jadeskye on 10/28/2007 1:10:35 PM , Rating: 2

Nah people will still use PS3s for supercomputers, sony did invent them for numbercrunching right?

Here is another one

By Etern205 on 10/29/2007 12:19:21 AM , Rating: 2

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2...

NEC SX-9

By heavyiron521 on 10/29/2007 2:15:41 PM , Rating: 2

There is a famous Saturday Night Live skit where Jane Curtin and Gilda Radner did a parody of the legendary Doublemint gum commercial. Their product was a do-everything liquid for around the house. The tag line was:

"It's a dessert topping!. No, it's a floor wax! No! It's both!"

I get the same karma after reading the article on the SX-9. The article alternately calls it a "server" and then a machine optimized for number crunching,leaving me to wonder which it really is.

The solitary fact that it has a 600-hp engine does not automatically make a John Deere tractor a good NASCAR competitor. By allegory, just because a computer has an incredibly fast CPU does not automatically mandate that it will be useful as a server. The data pathways in a server will be very different from the data pathways in a machine optimized for scientific computing and simulation.

Based on NEC's past emphasis, I suspect that the use of the word "server" in the article is misleading.