Amazon Builds 42nd Fastest Supercomputer, but it's on the Cloud
Amazon’s virtual super computer is capable of running 240 trillion calculations per second, or 240 teraflops. That’s a far cry from the world’s fastest computer, Japan’s K Computer, which last we heard was humming along at around 10 petaflops. It’s even short of Intel’s crazy fast Knights Corner chip, which has fifty cores and one petaflop performance on a single chip.
However, Wired reports that for $1,279 per hour, anyone can run their applications across 300,000 cores on Amazon’s supercomputer cloud application. Compared to the millions of dollars required to roll your own supercomputer, that’s a pretty attractive offer. According to Read Write Web, Amazon took the #42 slot with a mere 17,024 cores.
While Amazon may not be pull the most intensive data customers away from the K Computer and others with its offering, it certainly will be turning heads with this new cloud capability. Also, it may be a signal that the more run-0f-the-mill services provided on the cloud are becoming even more robust: Consider, that Amazon was able to set up and run its cloud-based supercomputer all while thousands of its existing customers were running their cloud applications as well.
- The K Computer passes 10 petaflops
- Knights Corner is a supercomputer on a chip
- Amazon’s cloud platform didn’t do so well compared to Microsoft Azure
- But some guy is using it to create a million virtual monkeys
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