Claims about massive computing prowess are always best taken with a pinch of salt, so it's with that in mind that we digest the news that NEC's 'Earth Simulator' supercomputer has attained the world's top computing efficiency.
The Japanese system has reportedly achieved sustained performance of 122.4 teraflops and computing efficiency of 93.38 per cent on the LINPACK benchmark.
Global warming
What that means in more tangible terms is that the Earth Simulator can better process data on global warming, pollution and hurricanes for its owners at Japan's Earth-science agency.
NEC's press release explains that the system is made up of 160 separate computing nodes with large-scale shared memory, high speed data transfer between the CPU and memory and an ultra high speed network connection. We'll take their word for it.
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gandharva81
June 8th
3. This is good but not for all...
I mean this is only for UK not for entire world, anyway we should take of our surrounding...
thanx
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mpeskett
June 7th
2. The problem isn't so much from garbage going in, it's the chaotic factors in the atmosphere and climate that make predictions diverge so wildly from the truth over long spans of time.
You could have the best data ever obtained about the current state of the climate, and use a brilliant simulator, but the imperfections and approximations that make it every so slightly different from reality will all add up.
Chaotic systems are a ***** that way - any slight difference in initial conditions will multiply itself into a big difference later on.
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agentcool
June 7th
1. You can have all the teraflops in the world but, as always, if you put garbage in, you'll get garbage out. This is why long-term climate models have always, and will remain to be, hopelessly inaccurate.
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