Super Dorky Supercomputers
Newscientist has a slide show of the worlds fastest computers today. What I learned from said slideshow is that Oak Ridge Ntional Labratory totally dorks out with its super computers.
This is an image of the current fastest computer in the world. Guess what they call it? Give up? Its the “Jaguar,” and its used by the department of Energy.
Here’s the previous fastest computer ever, now third fastest. It’s called the Kraken, and is used by the National Institute for Computational Science:
Images produced by these badboys follow after the jump.
Aside from being able to surf like 3,000,000 pages of porn simultaneously, these behemoths also crank out images like this:
This is supposedly “A simulation of flux in carbon dioxide release and absorption by soil and vegetation as the sun rises over eastern Europe, run on Jaguar,” but I know the world’s bitchinest game of Risk ever when I see it.
This is a simulation from Kraken of what would happen if the San Andreas Fault slipped something fierce. See that red area- that’s where I’m spending Christmas this year!
So there you go. Apparently these computing facilities save a little extra to pay some graphic designer to spruce up their super-computers. I don’t know why they didn’t just go the translucent shell with lots of cool LED lights though. I’m told that’s the killer way to go while spenidng 12 hours at a clip killing aliens online.
November 30, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Kraken is going on my Christmas list! I’m too humble to ask for Jaguar. Plus, I like the cephalopod graphic better.
November 30, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Im fascinated by the photo presentations of the two. With Kraken, they got a personalized squid piece, complete with 1s and 0s, they lighted the place nice and bright and the photographer was willing to get on his belly to shoot the thing from the worm’s eye view.
Meanwhile I think the Jaguar photo may have been found on Google or some clip art library and no lying on the floor is being done. I’m undecided whether the lighting was done that way for effect or if that’s how they found it.
I do think they should have reconsidered making the Kraken blue on a blue background though. Visually confusing.
November 30, 2009 at 5:54 pm
five’ll get you ten the jaguar photo was purposefully lit that way by some professional whose take on it was darkness = edgy dangerous cool. I didn’t even notice the lack of much variation between back and foreground in the kraken til you mentioned it but maybe a slightly lighter more turquoise-y background would work better.
December 1, 2009 at 1:01 am
Saw a supercomputer in Amarillo, Texas. It was crunching risk factors (also on a worldwide scale)…for an insurance consulting company. I was helping the son-in-law of Guymon Saunders clean out his office a month after he passed away. Somewhere in the middle he just blurted out – as if he had even briefed me on what it could do – “…and there it is.”, as if it was some kind of Mayan God.