IBM and Los Alamos Produce Roadrunner Supercomputer (Crysis Still Crashes…)
“It’s a very souped-up Playstation 3,” or at least that’s what David Turek, vice president of IBM’s supercomputing programs, said about his company’s newest baby, The Roadrunner. “We took the basic chip design [of a PS3] and advanced its capability,” said Turek, speaking about the computer’s use of a modified version of the PS3’s lauded “Cell” microprocessor.
Roadrunner is effectively twice as fast as IBM’s last record breaker, the Blue Gene.
Sadly, the Roadrunner won’t ever be used for the noble pursuit of gaming; instead, Roadrunner will be relegated to mundane tasks such as simulating nuclear explosions and mimicking the human brain. Yawn.
