OK, a 1+ petaflop/s supercomputer tested with a software that mimics more than 1 billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses, and with the primary task of ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S's nuclear weapons stockpile... kinda reminds me of the fictional Skynet and TheTurk.
We might be seeing more of Sarah Connor and Cameron.
Ok no more fiction, lets go to the facts. 
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The new No. 1 system, built by IBM for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and called “Roadrunner”, achieved performance of 1.026 petaflop/s—becoming the first supercomputer ever to reach this milestone.
The prefix “peta” stands for a million billion, also known as a quadrillion. For the Roadrunner supercomputer, operating at petaflop/s performance means the machine can process a million billion calculations each second.
Roadrunner connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips as well as 12,240 Cell chips (IBM QS22 blades which are built with advanced versions of the processor in the Sony PlayStation 3) and runs on open-source Linux software from Red Hat.
While verifying Roadrunner’s performance, Los Alamos and IBM researchers used three different computational codes to test the machine. Among those codes was one dubbed “PetaVision” by its developers and the research team using it.
PetaVision models the human visual system—mimicking more than 1 billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses. Neurons are nerve cells that process information in the brain. Neurons communicate with each other using synaptic connections, analogous to what transistors are in modern computer chips. Synapses store memories and play a vital role in learning.
Synapses set the scale for computations performed by the brain while undertaking such tasks as locomotion, hearing or vision. Because there are about a quadrillion synapses in the human brain, human cognition is a petaflop/s computational problem.
The new No. 1 system, built by IBM for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and called “Roadrunner”, achieved performance of 1.026 petaflop/s—becoming the first supercomputer ever to reach this milestone.
The prefix “peta” stands for a million billion, also known as a quadrillion. For the Roadrunner supercomputer, operating at petaflop/s performance means the machine can process a million billion calculations each second.
Roadrunner connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips as well as 12,240 Cell chips (IBM QS22 blades which are built with advanced versions of the processor in the Sony PlayStation 3) and runs on open-source Linux software from Red Hat.
While verifying Roadrunner’s performance, Los Alamos and IBM researchers used three different computational codes to test the machine. Among those codes was one dubbed “PetaVision” by its developers and the research team using it.
PetaVision models the human visual system—mimicking more than 1 billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses. Neurons are nerve cells that process information in the brain. Neurons communicate with each other using synaptic connections, analogous to what transistors are in modern computer chips. Synapses store memories and play a vital role in learning.
Synapses set the scale for computations performed by the brain while undertaking such tasks as locomotion, hearing or vision. Because there are about a quadrillion synapses in the human brain, human cognition is a petaflop/s computational problem.
Roadrunner resides at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory where its primary task will be to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S's nuclear weapons stockpile.
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Sources:
Los Alamos National Laboratory
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/13602
Top 500 Supercomputer Sites
http://www.top500.org/lists/2008/06
Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/ap_on_hi_te/fastest_computer
Techrepublic (Photos):
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-206966-1.html
Fact Sheet & Background: Roadrunner Smashes the Petaflop Barrier:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24405.wss
Roadrunner ranked 3 in the Green 500 list for June 2008, 437.43MFLOPS/W:
http://www.green500.org/lists/2008/06/green500.php
Sources:
Los Alamos National Laboratory
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/13602
Top 500 Supercomputer Sites
http://www.top500.org/lists/2008/06
Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/ap_on_hi_te/fastest_computer
Techrepublic (Photos):
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-206966-1.html
Fact Sheet & Background: Roadrunner Smashes the Petaflop Barrier:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24405.wss
Roadrunner ranked 3 in the Green 500 list for June 2008, 437.43MFLOPS/W:
http://www.green500.org/lists/2008/06/green500.php
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