[NEWS] - Supercomputing on a PC.

[CougTek]

At the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California, startup ClearSpeed Technologies will detail its CS301, a new high-performance, low-power floating-point processor.

The new chip is a parallel processor capable of performing 25 billion floating-point operations per second, or 25 gigaflops.

According to the company, the chip has the potential to bring supercomputer performance to the desktop.

An ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards, each containing four of the chips, would perform at about 600 gigaflops (or more than half a teraflop).

At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.

"That's a supercomputer on the desktop," said Simon McIntosh-Smith, ClearSpeed's director of architecture.

The souped-up PC would cost about $25,000, ClearSpeed said.

In fact, according to the current Top500 supercomputers list, it would rank 135th. Awesome for a 25,000$ box. Anyone wants to make a generous effort to help our Folding@home team?

I know someone talked about ClearSpeed not long ago in the forum, so that's not really new. But the possibilities are nonetheless impressive.

News source

 

[Buck]

Very nice. I wish I could throw some cash in that direction, but money is tight at the moment.

 

[CougTek]

Thinking about it, it would be a lot better if it would be offered on the PCI-X interface rather than on the typical 32bit/33MHz PCI slot. Otherwise, it will choke.

 

[cquinn]

I'm still trying to figure out where they are going to find
an "ordinary desktop PC" with six PCI slots.

 

[Buck]

Indeed cquinn, it is not as ordinary as they imply. Although there are a handful of full size ATX boards with 6 PCI slots.