Communications of the ACM
Dutch Smallest Computer
A team of Dutch scientists has built a supercomputer the size of four pizza boxes that has the computing power of 10,000 PCs.
Credit: Jeroen Bedorf/Leiden University
Researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands have constructed a small supercomputer, the Little Green Machine II, from four servers with four professionalized graphics cards, which provides more than 0.2 petaflops in computing power.
The PCs were linked via a high-speed network, and Leiden's Simon Portegies Zwart says the system consumes only about 1% of the electricity of a similar large supercomputer.
"This technology is essential for the construction of a supercomputer, but not very useful for playing video games," says Leiden's Jeroen Bedorf.
The researchers adopted IBM's OpenPower architecture for the Little Green Machine II, and tested the system by modeling a galactic collision.
The supercomputer is about 10 times faster than its predecessor, the Little Green Machine I.
The team says oceanography, computer science, artificial intelligence, financial simulation, and astronomy are some of the areas in which the supercomputer will be used.
From Astronomie.nl (Netherlands)
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