Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at University of Texas is all set to start working on a powerful supercomputer after getting the $27 million grant from the National Science Foundation, reports CNN. The new supercomputer will become operational by 2013.
In 2003, TACC made a series of fast supercomputers that were called Lonestars. Within a few years, TACC produced more powerful system, the Ranger, that was about 100 times more powerful than Lonestars.
The new supercomputer system to be produced has been named Stampede. According to TACC officials, it would have been world’s fastest supercomputer had it become operational today.
“Building these very powerful computing systems enables researchers who are at the forefront of certain fields to ask deeper questions, to run bigger simulations, to test their theories at the boundaries of what we currently know, and that helps push those boundaries back,” says TACC Director Jay Boisseau.
Stampede will feature two different types of Intel processors. Over 12,000 eight-core Xeon E5 processors, when integrated will give 2 petaflops speed. Another 8 petaflops speed will be achieved through Intel’s newest MIC chips. The supercomputer will complete 10 quadrillion operations per second. IBM’s massive Watson computer will be much less powerful if compared to Stampede.
“It’s like resolution in a camera – we’re always trying to increase the pixels in our cameras,” said Omar Ghattas, a professor of geosciences at the University of Texas. Ghattas has worked on supercomputers and used them to study several important events such as Japan’s earthquake, melting ice sheets in Antarctica, etc.
Currently, world’s fastest computer is the K computer serving a computing institute in Kobe, Japan. It has demonstrated a peak speed of 8.162 petaflops.
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