Yeah, we like our computers really fast, but we’re not really sure what can be achieved with 10 quadrillion floating point operations per second (petaflops) that would actually be a good thing. Although that could probably play Hard Reset at an absolutely sick frame rate.
Yep, the Japanese are back with their latest in making the entire freaking human race obsolete, and this time it’s with the K Computer, a device that uses 88,000 CPUs. Pause and consider for a moment that IBM made a cat brain with about a quarter of that. OK, OK, these are high performance processors.
Oh, and it won’t stay around for long: the Department of Energy is having 20 petaflop machines built by IBM and Cray, and the heat is on to build exascale computer that will make everything currently crunching numbers look like a Compaq Presario.
Eventually, of course, these machines will hijack our nuclear codes and hold us hostage to their whims, but until then, it’s kinda cool.
[ via the computational power of Wired ]