“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.