Silicon Graphics this week became the second computer maker to claim it has built the fastest supercomputer, a title that will be officially announced next month.
The US-based company said its Linux-based system, built in conjunction with NASA and Intel, has 10,240 Intel Itanium 2 processors. The supercomputer was unveiled at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
Called Columbia, the system has performed a record-setting 42.7 trillion calculations per second, or 42.7 teraflops, while using only four-fifths of the machine's processors, SGI said. The system was sold in July.
Columbia's alleged speed mark is higher than the 36.1 teraflops IBM claimed for its Blue Gene/L system in September. That system outdistanced NEC's Earth Simulator, which has led the list of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers since 2002.
The Top500 rankings, which are updated twice a year, are scheduled for release at the SC2004 supercomputing show in Pittsburgh, which begins 6 November.
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