Cray XT5 supercomputer becomes world’s fastest thanks to upgrade — 1.75 petaflops/sec

Take your current desktop screamer and go for a stroll outside on a bone chilling mid-January mid-west winter. Take your prised rig and drop it in the freshly fallen snow and dump molasses all over it. When you’re done, poor water all over the mass of mess and fire up the leave blower. Got a nice vivid picture yet? That’s roughly the speed of your computer compared to the current champ — the Cray XT5 Super Computer. You may recognize the name as it isn’t a new development but instead an upgraded model.

Claiming this “world’s fastest” title requires some serious processing power. Power that the Cray XT5 (Jaguar) doesn’t lack, clocking in at 1.75petaflops/sec. That’s a lot, — a lot — of flopping. Recent upgrades pushing the standard quad-core set up to a 6-core configuration were enough to muscle the Cray ahead of the old champ dubbed “Roadrunner”. How long will the new champ reign supreme? As we all know, not long at all in this world.

In case you were curious on what the inner workings of a supercomputer looked like or how said computer gets upgrades, jump inside for a handy little video. It’s ok. I know you’re at work trying to look busy while passing the minutes that are dragging into hours….

Erictric

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