ACADEMIA
DOE Supercomputer Hits 2 Billion Processor Hours
The fastest computer on your desk hits 3 billion calculations per second. But it's standing still compared to the U.S. Department of Energy's supercomputers.
This week the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), located at the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, hit the 2 billion processor-hour mark. Its speed? Five hundred fifty seven trillion calculations a second or more than 150,000 times as fast as a top of the line PC.
A processor-hour represents a single processor running for one hour. In May, researchers from SUNY at Stony Brook were studying computational fluid dynamics when the ALCF reached the 2 billion mark.
ALCF is used for complex tasks such as assessing climate change and designing aerodynamic surfaces.