

Inside the UK's fastest machine - theoneill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/02/computing.climatechange

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huherto
"It has cost GBP5.6m less than the GBP65m estimate to build" and "in computing
terms that is the same as 12,000 standard desktop computers"

59.4 M / 12000 = GBP4,950 each. A good desktop computer is less than GBP1,000.
It doesn't sound like a great buy.

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DarrenStuart
interesting its number 17 in the top 500 list. I would wager that the
government here in the uk has a couple bigger ones that they can't talk about.
I bet the US has a few too.

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cperciva
The Top500 list refers to performance on the linpack benchmark. While the UK
and US government probably have "more powerful" systems than this which are
used for classified purposes, those are likely to be special-purpose designs
which aren't able to run the linpack benchmark. (For example, the NSA has
access to wafer fabrication facilities, and is believed to have several custom
silicon designs.)

The linpack benchmark runs on general-purpose supercomputers, and non-
classified supercomputers shared between a large number of researchers are
inherently general-purpose supercomputers.

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DarrenStuart
thanks, great bit of insight

