All the talk around super computers usually involves talk of Megaflops and pure, blinding speed. Power consumption, while not as popular, also get’s a notable mention as such number crunching powerhouses suck down energy like there’s no tomorrow. But not Kei Hiraki’s Grape-DR “Green” supercomputer.
Located in the Department of Information Science at the University of Tokyo, the Grape-DR super-green-computer is comprised of (64) Intel Core i7 920 processors with 4 Grape-DR accelerator chips. The latter reportedly can achieve 200Megaflops all while sipping down a relatively meager 50 watts of energy. Overall, the Grape-DR can pump out a healthy 815.43 Megaflops.
In the name of happy trees, the Grape-DR is the fastest, “greenest” supercomputer around. But when stacked up against their nature-slaying, we don’t care about bambi brethren, they fall to the bottom of the pack — 500th out of 500. Still, the Grape-DR is a monumental achievement for sure.
