Nice spoof

[ChristiaanJ]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080114/sc_nm/britain_computer_dc_2;_ylt=ArioP0Obo8VqUGrAT_UyPOUE1vAI
Just a heads-up. Will be moved to JetBlast shortly, shurely...

[mustpost]

I'm afraid Hector is real
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7186894.stm :suspect:

[Whirlygig]

They should have called it Deep Thought though!

Cheers

Whirls

[Loose rivets]

But...But...the first report seems to tell of many orders of magnitude less flops than the second report. One is confused.:8

[ChristiaanJ]

Thanks mustbyte.
Some twit at Yahoo or Reuters must have decided the 63 million million was a typo....

Even so, 63,000,000,000,000/12,000 = 5.25 x 1,000,000,000 operations per second.
With a basic clock at 2 to 3 GHz no PC runs at over 5 giga operations per second, never mind how you define an 'operation'.

Ah, those media :8

Christian

[ChristiaanJ]

Loose rivets,
What made you think they were actually talking about FLOPS, or even had the remotest idea what they were?
And does anybody here have a figure in terms of FLOPS for the performance of the typical current PC?
For once, the flight simmers will be welcome, because they're often the ones pushing their PCs to the limits.

Oh, and for the non-geeks reading this... FLOPS stands for FLoating point OPerationS per second.
It's a way of measuring computer performance, that's more significant than the basic processor clock frequency.

Christian

[frostbite]

Give it a few years and we'll have that sort of power in our watches.

[ChristiaanJ]

Give it a few years and we'll have that sort of power in our watches.Apart from having to develop 'micro' fingers and 'macro' eyes you may not be that far away from the truth....
As little as five years ago, having photo/video cameras and GPS in a cell phone would have seemed somewhat .... let's say "futuristic" ?

[green granite]

With the power of 12,000 desktop PCs, the mammoth machine called HECToR is the country's fastest computer and one of the most powerful in Europe.
After years of development, Chancellor Alistair Darling is due to attend the official launch ceremony for the 113 million pound machine.

They could have brought 12,000 quad powered pc's for about £6,000,000 and paralleled them all together :E

[Newforest]

Can you think of 63 million questions that you want answered in a second?:D

[ChristiaanJ]

Can you think of 63 million questions that you want answered in a second?Yes, easily. And of each question needing a million operations? Yes, that too.
Some CFD (computed fluid dynamics) calculations need that sort of computing power.

[Bushfiva]

Christiaan,

And does anybody here have a figure in terms of FLOPS for the performance of the typical current PC?

Very rough numbers here: fastest P4, about 3-12 GFLOPs. Core Duo 20-40 GFLOPs Fast gaming graphics card, around 80-800 GFLOPs. XBox360 around 1TFLOP. Sony PS3 around 2TFLOPs.

The numbers are very rough since they specifically refer to floating ops and there are a bazillion ways of measuring even that specific metric, the FLOP is a very poor way of measuring overall performance, and in all the above devices other than maybe the graphics cards you don't necessarily see all the FLOPs at once, and they're not all there to do what you want them to do. For example, individual components of the XBox 360 and PS3 max out around 200-400 GFLOPs.

[ZH875]

And I will bet that JPA would still be a crock if run on HECTOR.

[airborne_artist]

As little as five years ago, having photo/video cameras and GPS in a cell phone would have seemed somewhat .... let's say "futuristic" ?

Only to my Granny. That kind of functionality has been possible for quite some time, with the first commercial camera in a phone in 1998/9.

The issue with GPS in the handset is mostly about the intellectual property of the GPS chipsets, and arguments about how the mobile carriers will implement the technology and as importantly, make money from it. SiRF and Qualcomm had GPS chipsets available for mobile phones in I think 2002, and certainly 2003.

FWIW I first saw GPS in the flesh, and working, in 1978.