Tuesday, February 22, 2011

IBM Super Computer at DOE - So what?

I see all kinds of articles like this. Seems IBM has developed a Super Duper World's Fastest computer, for the Department of Energy. Wow. Ok.. Now so what? Can it run Mac OSX? Can it even run Windows 7? Can you do your taxes on it? Alot of stats are thrown at us, like how many teraflops it can do. Ok, but is that on real data? Is the computer actually useful? I never get answers to my questions in any high tech articles. They always want to bore us to death with speed calculations and teraflop numbers. How about real world features? My Mac, for instance, can capture video from an external VHS source, or I am able to run every single app on my Mac simultaneously, every one of my 204 apps. It is fun, try it! I also like pushing the envelope on the PC world. I believe the more apps that are running and open, are a real test of performance. Hmm, or maybe of quickly can an email be sent, or received. How about how quickly a single app opens? These are real world challenges. Ok so the IBM system is fast, but is it practical, and useful? Lets see that in an article for once. By the way, it won't be operational until 2012. Geez, talk about vapor ware.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2380375,00.asp