Linux Supercomputer Roadrunner Takes Petaflops Hurdle
The Roadrunner supercomputer developed by IBM for the Department of Energy at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is the first to take the Petaflops hurdle of 1.026 billion operations per second.
The hybrid machine running on a Red Hat Linux-based operating system easily outpaces the previous leader in the Top500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, BlueGene/L (478 Teraflops) again by IBM, which achieves just half of Roadrunner’s performance Roadrunner will mainly be used for military research into nuclear weapons, with some capacity also being dedicated to researching the human genome and to weather simulations. The hybrid machine combines the Cell processor designed for the PlayStation with AMD x86 processors, with no less than 6948 dual-core Opteron chips installed. 12,960 Cell processors form part two of the machine, which has no less than 80 terabytes of memory, residing in 288 BladeCenter racks and occupying a floor space of 6000 square meters. The supercomputer is comparatively frugal with respect to power requirements, clocking up 376 million operations per watt. IBM expects Roadrunner to take one of the top notches in the list of green supercomputers. The investment in the project was around US$ 100 m says IBM.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.