A Chinese computer designer has created a supercomputer with a resolution of 1,000 petabytes (10.5 terabytes) and an operating speed of 3.7 petaflops (12.6 teraflop) — more than twice as fast as the fastest supercomputer in the world.
The machine, which will be named MSI-E, is a joint effort between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The goal is to compete with the likes of the world’s fastest supercomputers such as IBM’s supercomputer at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The supercomputer, which is estimated to have a power consumption of 5,000 terafloras (3,000 gigaflombs), has been built using two 8GB Intel Xeon CPUs, four 8GB of RAM and six gigabytes of flash storage.
The system is built using an open-source design and is designed to run on a custom-built version of Windows 8.1.
Its computer hardware is based on the IBM PC-ZX5500, a commercial-grade computer with a 1.3-GHz processor, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, 1TB of flash memory, two 1TB drives, a 1TB hard drive, two 120GB hard drives, an 802.11b/g/n WiFi network and Bluetooth 4.0.
The computer’s software is open source, and the company claims the system is “the first fully modular supercomputer to run Linux.”
The system’s software will run on Windows 10 and Linux, though it is not clear whether it will run Windows 8 or Windows 7.
“MSI-EE has become the world leader in supercomputing,” said the company’s chief scientist, Liu Mingzhong, who added that the supercomputer’s hardware design will be based on a “standard-design design” that will be able to run the latest versions of the Linux operating system.
The MSI supercomputer was first demonstrated in December 2014.
The team of six engineers from China’s Central Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (CIEIT), who will be building the supercomposite are also building a version of the system for the European supercomputer Hino.
The company’s goal is that its supercomputer will be capable of competing with the fastest machines on the planet.