Monday, October 31, 2005

IBM Supercomputer: Faster

The most powerful computer on the planet has broken its own record — now able to do more than twice the number of calculations per second. IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer can now do 280.6 teraflops — 280.6 trillion calculations a second. This makes it twice as fast as when it was ranked the most powerful computer on earth in June — every six months the fastest supercomputers are ranked by experts.

The machine, housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has quadrupled its performance in 12 months. At its current speed, Blue Gene can do more calculations per second than every person in the world armed with a handheld calculator would be able to do in decades. Previously under development, Blue Gene/L now joins another supercomputer ASC Purple working on protecting the USA's nuclear stockpile.

Purple on its own is capable of 100 Teraflops, or 100 trillion floating point calculations per second. When combined, the two machines are capable of nearly 400 Teraflops, that is nearly half a petaflop. IBM tries to put this number in context by pointing out that "if every person in the world had a hand-held calculator it would still take decades to perform the number of calculations Blue Gene performs every single second".

Blue Gene will work on materials ageing calculations, molecular dynamics, material modelling as well as turbulence and instability in hydrodynamics. Purple will then use that information to run 3D weapons codes needed to simulate nuclear weapons performance quickly. The rest of the time, the enormous processing power will be brought to bear on modelling the human brain, and other computationally intensive scientific research.




Wednesday, October 26, 2005

IBM Chip for Xbox 360

IBM has unveiled details of the unnamed processor that will slot into Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console due out on Nov. 22. The processor, which is based on IBM's 64-bit PowerPC architecture, comes with three cores, or calculating engines, that each run at clock speeds greater than 3GHz, IBM said. The cores, based on the PowerPC design, connect into a shared 1MB L2 cache. Overall, the chip has 165 million transistors, takes up 168 sq. mm of space and was built with a 90 nanometer manufacturing process. The chip has 1MB of high-speed cache memory built in, which is shared by the three cores. It's highly configurable and programmable utilizing eFUSE technology.

IBM and Microsoft engineers worked together over a two-year period beginning in 2003 to design the three-core processor specifically for high definition gaming and entertainment, the company said. IBM is quite proud that it delivered the product in less than 24 months after signing a deal with Microsoft in the fall of 2003.

Microsoft plans to launch the Xbox 360 Nov. 22 in the U.S., followed by Europe on Dec. 2 and Japan on Dec. 10.




Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Dual Core PowerPC Mac



















Apple rolled out two new workstations today based on NVIDIA's Quadro FX
4500 solutions, featuring dual and quad processors. The latest machines
are top-to-bottom NVIDIA machines--making the news a first for both
companies.

The news was announced today in New York by Philip Schiller, Apple's
senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, who said,"The Power Mac G5
Quad delivers the workstation performance our creative and scientific
customers demand. With quad-core processing, a new PCI Express
architecture, and the fastest workstation card from NVIDIA, the new Power
Mac G5 Quad is the most powerful system we've ever made."

The new Apple Power Mac G5 desktops are available in two versions,
featuring dual and quad 2.5 GHz G5 processors and a PCI Express
architecture. This is the first Apple platform ever available with four x16
PCI-E slots capable of driving up to 5 Apple 30" dual-link HD Cinema
Displays or eight standard single-link displays. Apple is touting this as "the
first ever professional graphics on an Apple platform," running under a
64-bit OS.

This was really a celebration day for Macintosh artists around the world.
Apple also announced a professional photography tool Aperture today: a
major application with hefty system requirements.




Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Video iPod

Apple has unveiled its new video iPod. The
original white version of the digital music
player has been upgraded, and now features
a bigger screen and a thinner casing. The
new iPod will be available in either black or
white and customers will have a choice of 30
or 60 GB of storage. The video-playing
gadget follows Apple's development of the
iPod shuffle, mini and nano. Announcing the
new product, Apple boss Steve Jobs said that
the company has sold more than 28 million
iPods since their launch in 2001 and that
more than one million iPod nanos were sold
in the first 17 days they were available.

The 30 GB version of the video playing
gadget should cost $299 and the 60GB
will be available for $399. The 40 GB model has been discontinued. A 30
GB model can hold about 7,500 songs, 25,000 photos, or 75 hours of
video. Both 30GB and 60GB models will feature a 2.5 inch color screen
that is 320 by 240 pixels in size and will be thinner than the existing 20
GB iPod. Over 2,000 music videos will be available through the iTunes
store, at a price of £1.89 each.US television company ABC are planning to
let customers purchase episodes of shows for $1.99, which will be
available the day after broadcast. Movie-making tools that Apple bundles
in with Quicktime 7 Pro will be compatible with the new video iPods.




Friday, October 07, 2005

No Driver No RC!



Nicknamed
'Alice', a Ford
E-350 van
converted
into a 'No
Driver No
Remote
Control'
Robot Car by
students and
faculty team
of Caltech
(Pasadena, CA)






Tomorrow in Mojave desert 23 teams will participate in the 2005 DARPA
Grand Challenge
, a desert race for robot cars (no driver no remote
control) with a $2 million prize sponsored by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research arm of the U.S
Department of Defense.

The DARPA Grand Challenge race is intended to hasten the research and
development of autonomous ground vehicles that could ultimately be used
to ferry supplies to the front lines or transport wounded soldiers. The
technology is also likely to have ramifications for future automobile
technology, especially for helping disabled drivers and it will likely have an
impact on future autonomous space exploration as well.

The race is open to individuals and organizations, and has a $2 million first
prize. This year's desert racecourse will be similar to last year's (which
was a 142-mile race from L.A. to Las Vegas through desert roads ), but
participants won't know the exact route until two hours before the race.
To win the race the course needs to be completed in 10 hours.

To know more and to keep track, visit DARPA site.