The Germans will have bragging rights to the floppiest supercomputer in Europe today as the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) is upgrading its Power-based massively parallel supercomputers to break through the petaflops barrier. IBM is on a BlueGene/P kick lately, and today, it will announce that the German Ministry of Research …

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 08:36 GMT Lars

Yes, of course.

I remember when they used to call them "home made" or "self made" or something similar at top500. Not all that many years ago.

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 08:36 GMT raving angry loony

Name?

This is Germany. It'll be called the Forschungszentrum Juelich Petafloppencomputerdamnfastgewerkenarbeitmitoast and it'll bloody like it! Then some Dutch wag will call it Hanz.

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 09:17 GMT Anonymous Coward

Independence

Shame we have to rely on US technology.

There is a sad history of the Transputer and other innovations that failed.

Can't someone build a supercomputer based on a very large number of ARM chips ? How can Europe be self-reliant ? Don't our governments care ?

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 09:17 GMT It wasnt me

@raving angry loony

new keyboard please

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 10:10 GMT pctechxp

should have been x86

As we've had over 3 Ghz CPUs for years, just imagine the power if it was stuffed with a load of Xeons

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 13:03 GMT Toastan Buttar

Obligatory:

"Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these..." and "Will I be able to run Crysis on it ?"

Seriously, though. What does anyone need a number-cruncher like that for ? It's got to the stage of a willy-waving contest.

Paris, cos.......well.

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 13:03 GMT Anonymous Coward

Yes but will it run...

..oh I can't be bothered.

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 13:03 GMT Nick Ryan

re: should have been x86

"just imagine the power if it was stuffed with a load of Xeons."

You're right... their electricity supplier would be ecstatic if it was...

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 14:26 GMT Anonymous Coward

Re: Independence

> There is a sad history of the Transputer and other innovations that failed.

The Transputer didn't fail. The core is still selling.

If you've got a digital TV decoder - anywhere in the world - there's a good chance it's got a Transputer core in it.

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Tuesday 10th February 2009 17:17 GMT Anonymous Coward

@Transputer

Having a cheap ST chip in a set top box is one thing.

Having a parallel computer architecture, upon which a new OS (Helios) and paradigm was to be based was the goal. The UK failed to fund this and the vision failed.

Most of the set top boxes with the ST chip in them are the cheap, poor performing ones. The better ones have a Pallas/Vulcan PowerPC chip in them. Alas, IBM messed up and they have not kept up in this space.

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