OIL & GAS

The new supercomputer, dubbed "Big Mac", built by Virginia Tech from desktop Apple G5 computers could be the second fastest system. Initial benchmark tests conducted on five per cent of the system's processors indicate that Big Mac is delivering about 80% of its theoretical peak. That peak is 17.6 teraflops. Jack Dongarra, at the University of Tennessee, maintains a list of the world's TOP500 supercomputers and says Big Mac has a good chance of taking the second spot, according to these results. The percentage of theoretical peak performance achieved will normally decrease as the number of processors linked together increases, because of the greater complexity. But Dongarra says Big Mac will undoubtedly be among the top systems in the world. "They'll certainly be in the top class." The next official update of the TOP500 list will be revealed at the Supercomputing Conference in November. If the system turns out to perform at 80 per cent or above Big Mac would rank second in the world only to NEC's Earth Simulator, based at the Marine Science and Technology Center in Kanagawa, Japan. This system shook the supercomputing world by storming to the top of list in April 2002. The Earth Simulator consists of 640 separate units, each containing eight custom built NEC Vector processors - making a grand total of more than 5000 processors. It is capable of 35.61 teraflops.