Titan: a computer $ 97 million ... Research

The U.S. government has ordered a copy of the most powerful computer in the world to conduct research on energy future. Completion expected in 2013. The order was placed with the manufacturer Cray computer for $ 96 million. Named Titan, the supercomputer will be an evolution of the Jaguar that currently have the United States.

To build this machine, a Cray uses the best processor AMD (Opteron) and Nvidia (Tesla). In all, there are between 8,000 and 19,000 chips that make up Titan, or 299 008 hearts, all accompanied by 600 TB of RAM.
With these components, it will be "more than twice as fast and three times more energy efficient than the current fastest computer, located in Japan," says Nvidia. Today, Jaguar is developing 2.3 million billion mathematical calculations per second (petaflops). With the changes that will bring him Cray, this data will be pushed to 10 or 20 petaflops.

"Titan will be used for important research projects and varied, the development of commercially viable biofuels, cleaner engines, cleaner nuclear energy and solar energy more efficiently," says Jeff Nichols, manager of the laboratory of Oak Ridge U.S. Department of Energy.

To the General Manager of the laboratory, "discoveries that take weeks even on a system as powerful as Jaguar could take a few days with Titan. "