TOP500: All Show and no Go?

September 26, 2008 1 Comment

Inside HPC points us to this interesting writeup on limitations of the biannual TOP500 list of world’s fastest computers.
“Richard Loft, director of supercomputing research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says he doubts Roadrunner would operate at more than 2 percent of its peak rated power on NCAR’s ocean and climate models. That would bring it in at 20 to 30 teraflops — no slouch, to be sure, but so far short of that petaflops goal as to seem more worthy of the nickname “Roadwalker. The Top500 list is only useful in telling you the absolute upper bound of the capabilities of the computers,” Loft says. “It’s not useful in terms of telling you their utility in real scientific calculations.” Full Story

Filed under HPC

About Rich
FlexRex began his life as a cartoon character I created a Sun Microsystems. As the world's first "fictional blogger," he appeared in numerous parody films that made fun of the whole work-from-home thing. Somewhere along the line, the Sun IT department adopted FlexRex as their spokesman in a half-dozen security awareness films for employees. So when I left Sun recently, I started FlexRex Communications, a Marketing company in Portland, Oregon.

One Response to TOP500: All Show and no Go?

  1. John E West says:
    September 26, 2008 at 10:42 am

    Better headline than mine! 🙂

    Reply

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