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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