More on the MD Grape 3, the worlds first petaflop computer. It only cost $9 million to make, $15 per gigaflop. Found by velcro-city
The USA has 298 machines on the Top 500 supercomputer list.(Six of the top 10 supercomputers are U.S. machines.) Experts believe that the nation with the most machines near the top of the ranking generally has the most competitive economy.
2. Britain with 35 supercomputers
3. Japan (29)
4. China (28)
5. Germany (18)
Japan built a processor that did only the type of calculations they need to do in astrophysics. They built a specialized processor and a specialized network. It shows how cost- and power-efficient you can be if you build for a specific applications. Custom hardware can in general deliver 10-100 times the efficiency of generalized hardware with specialized software.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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