August 11, 2010

DARPA enlists NVIDIA to build exascale supercomputer that's '1000x faster' than today's quickest

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At this point, it's pretty obvious that GPUs will soon be playing a huge role in modern day supercomputers -- a role that may just rival that of the tried-and-true CPU. Virginia Tech is gleefully accepting $2 million in order to build a GPU and CPU-enabled HokieSpeed supercomputer, and todayDARPA is handing out $25 million to NVIDIA in order to develop "high-performance GPU computing systems." Specifically the Defense Department's research and development arm is aiming to address a so-called "crisis in computing," and if all goes well, the four-year project will eventually yield a "new class of exascale supercomputers which will be 1,000-times more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers." That's a pretty lofty goal, but NVIDIA will be aided by Cray, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a half-dozen US universities along the way. And yeah, if ever anyone's ego was prepared to topple Moore's Law, it'd be this guy.

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