"A few years back, a discussion of supercomputing architectures would have turned to talk of Cray or IBM eServer systems. You probably wouldn't have heard much about running Linux on Intel processors. However, with the maturation of open-source technology and the development of Intel's 64-bit technology, the supercomputing dialogue is different these days.
"For a glimpse into the future of high performance computing, look at NASA's 10,240-processor Columbia supercomputer, which achieved a rate of 51.87 trillion calculations per second (teraflops) earlier this month on the Linpack benchmark--earning it the number 2 spot on the Top 500 supercomputing list.
