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TECH UPDATE
Supercomputer based on gaming chip built .
IBM Corp has built a supercomputer the size of a television based on microchip technology to be used in gaming consoles due out next year.
IBM said the supercomputer, which can perform two trillion calculations per second, is a small-scale prototype of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer that it is building for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
The computer made it onto the Top 500 supercomputer list, which is compiled by a member of the University of Tennessee’s computer science department.
IBM vice president of technology and strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger said that the supercomputer used 1,000 microprocessors that are based on PowerPC microchip technology. The PowerPC chip is currently used in Apple Computer Inc. computers.
It is also the technology that will be the foundation of the next generation of gaming consoles from Nintendo and Sony Corp, which IBM is working on, he said.
He said the chips were less expensive and consumed less power than traditional microprocessors, making it possible to pack the same amount of computing power into a smaller space. Producing the chips in volume for gaming will help offset the costs of building supercomputers, he said.
‘Walkie Talkie’ phone
The world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia launched last week its first handset that also acts as a “walkie talkie,” allowing users to speak immediately at the push of a button.
Nokia said the 5140 model would be available during the second quarter of next year. The phone’s main feature, also called “push to talk,” allows users to instantly speak to one or more people, with the service generating extra cash for operators on top of people’s regular cellphone subscription fees.
“During 2004, Nokia will introduce a full range of push-to-talk capable GSM phones... From 2005 onwards push to talk will become available for all Nokia (GPRS and 3G) phones,” Nokia said in a statement.
“Push to talk” is currently offered in the United States by operators Nextel and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone Group (VOD.L).
Low-power supercomputer
Unveiling a unique supercomputer design, IBM said its Blue Gene/L machine is the size of a dishwasher and uses air-cooling methods to cut energy costs. The supercomputer is currently ranked as the 73rd fastest computer in the world.
The company has ambitious plans for the Blue Gene/L: it plans to boost the machine to first place in the supercomputer speed race by 2005, achieving a theoretical 360 trillion operations a second. If reached, that would eclipse the performance of the current supercomputer in first place, NEC’s Earth Simulator, in Japan. IBM’s prediction assumes that no competing supercomputer will surpass it in the interim.
The small size and the sparse energy consumption are unique features of the Blue Gene/L. Most other supercomputers have very large footprints and use water and air-cooling processes.
Running the Linux operating system, the Blue Gene/L is part of a project to solve complex genetic-research problems. The final full-blown configuration is being assembled for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.
Itanium 2 for multiple apps
Intel Corp. has announced that its Itanium 2 microprocessor due in 2005 and code-named “Montecito” will have four times more storage capacity than its predecessor and will be able to run several applications at once.
Existing Itanium chips have 6 megabytes cache and are not capable of multi-threading, in which multiple applications can be run simultaneously with no degradation to performance.
The company has already said the chip will have two processors on a single piece of silicon, known as “dual core” and have 24 megabytes of cache.
The Itanium chips crunch 64 bits of data at a time compared with the 32 bits at a time processed by Intel’s Pentium and Xeon servers.
Intel’s Itanium 2 processors, used on high-end servers, are being widely adopted by corporations, in addition to the traditional high-performance computing market typically represented by universities and research labs, said Lisa Graff, director of Itanium 2 worldwide ramp. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
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