For the first time ever, a supercomputer using Nvidia chips has achieved a spot on the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The Nvidia-containing machine is ranked No. 29 on the list that was released late Friday; it’s a cluster built by NEC and Sun Microsystems that uses chips from Nvidia, Intel and AMD. As Nvidia and AMD, which bought graphics chipmaker ATI in 2005, push graphics processors for scientific computing, this is a big milestone. The rest of the list was pretty anticlimactic, with IBM’s Roadrunner computer narrowly beating Cray’s Jaguar computer to stay on top of the twice-annual Top 500 list. Both machines are petaflop computers, meaning they can achieve a quadrillion floating point operations a second — a record that was broken by Roadrunner back in June.

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Microsoft and Cray are set to unveil the Cray CX1, a compact supercomputer running Windows HPC Server 2008.

The pair is expected to tout the new offering as “the most affordable supercomputer Cray has ever offered,” with pricing starting at $25,000. (That is amazing!)

The CX1 combines compute, storage and visualization in a single integrated system that’s designed for non-traditional environments like labs or offices. If space is a problem, not to worry, it’s compact enough to fit in a broom closet.  Perfect for home!

How can you get one?! It’s as easy as shopping on Amazon.com. You can go online, order the CX1 system using a configurator and pay with credit card.

Microsoft’s official launch of Windows HPC (High Performance Computing) Server 2008 is slated for September 22 in New York. Windows HPC Server 2008 is the high-end SKU of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 family. Microsoft is positioning the product as an alternative to Linux, which has gained a solid following in the high-end computing market. 

More at ZDNet.

Tags: amazon.com, cray, cx1, linux, microsoft, supercomputer, windows HPC server 2008

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After more than two years of pushing its scientific computing efforts, Nvidia’s graphics processors will be offered as an option in the newest line of Cray desktop supercomputers. The chipmaker plans to announce next week that its Tesla chips can be used in the $25,00 Cray desktop supercomputer, according to Nvidia spokesperson Andrew Humber. […]

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Supercomputers these days are compute monsters. IBM’s latest, the Roadrunner, packs the power of 100,000 laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, embraces a unique mix of IBM’s Cell processor and ubiquitous x86 chips from AMD, and has the ability to calculate 1,000 trillion operations every second. Of course, trends in supercomputing generally trickle downstream to the rest of the computer-using population eventually. Continue Reading.

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