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Linux powered Blue Gene/P becomes the fastest computer in the world
Four IBM (850 MHz) PowerPC® 450 processors are integrated on a single Blue Gene/P chip. Each chip is capable of 13.6 billion operations per second. A two-foot-by-two-foot board containing 32 of these chips churns out 435 billion operations every second, making it more powerful than a typical, 40-node cluster based on two-core commodity processors. Thirty-two of the compact boards comprise the 6-foot-high racks. Each rack runs at 13.9 trillion operations per second. The one-petaflop Blue Gene/P configuration is a 294,912-processor, 72-rack system harnessed to a high-speed, optical network. Blue Gene/P can be scaled to an 884,736-processor, 216-rack cluster to achieve three-petaflop performance. A standard Blue Gene/P configuration will house 4,096 processors per rack. |
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Comments (8)
Can I get one at Newegg?
After buying one of this giant.. kindly give at least 1 millisecond rest for every year....(I hope.. )
I wonder how it runs Quake. I suppose you could do real-time photon mapping with this. Sweet :-)
I believe the problem would not be so much "photon mapping" in terms of generating the data, but in delivering such a huge quantity of data to the display in real time.
It's not that the human eye doesn't have a huge bandwidth, it's that the brain only processes a part of what the eye sees at any given moment. That's why one can "overlook" something hidden in plain sight. Maybe that won't happen until there is a direct neural link.
The problem being that computer graphics techniques must evolve to deliver the data we want to see, not just tons of data. Why is a computer generated image almost always instantly recognizable as "fake"? Aye, there's the rub.
It's not that the human eye doesn't have a huge bandwidth, it's that the brain only processes a part of what the eye sees at any given moment. That's why one can "overlook" something hidden in plain sight. Maybe that won't happen until there is a direct neural link.
The problem being that computer graphics techniques must evolve to deliver the data we want to see, not just tons of data. Why is a computer generated image almost always instantly recognizable as "fake"? Aye, there's the rub.
Are we talking about the same kind of photon mapping? The one used for raytracing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_mapping)? The display is just the same as it would be normally, something like 1600x1200@75Hz. Except it could look like the SFX from Spiderman 3 instead :-)
As for CG looking fake, I disagree. It's a matter of money (processing power and quality artwork), not technology. Hollywood SFX have become quite good at visualizing pretty much anything without it looking fake, but you have to go see a realistic movie to appreciate that. Take Forrest Gump which is full of CG. Full CG movies lag a bit behind but only a few years.
I think the effect you are talking about is the uncanny valley, also used in robot discussions. That's mostly about people being able to see things unconsciously. When they look at a CG image suffering from it they can tell you it's fake but can't tell you why. Usually it's about lighting being not-quite-right and movement that is "off" (very obvious in the Matrix 2 fight with 100 agent Smiths).
As for CG looking fake, I disagree. It's a matter of money (processing power and quality artwork), not technology. Hollywood SFX have become quite good at visualizing pretty much anything without it looking fake, but you have to go see a realistic movie to appreciate that. Take Forrest Gump which is full of CG. Full CG movies lag a bit behind but only a few years.
I think the effect you are talking about is the uncanny valley, also used in robot discussions. That's mostly about people being able to see things unconsciously. When they look at a CG image suffering from it they can tell you it's fake but can't tell you why. Usually it's about lighting being not-quite-right and movement that is "off" (very obvious in the Matrix 2 fight with 100 agent Smiths).
"Take Forrest Gump which is full of CG. Full CG movies lag a bit behind but only a few years."
It's funny you should mention Forrest Gump. I've seen it in its entirety several times and thought the CG was very well used. Recently however I watched about 30 seconds when zapping during a commercial break. I watched Forrest carrying Captain Dan back to their lines and was stunned at how awful one of the CG effects looked.
The trick of course is being able to suspend your disbelief. When you're engrossed in the film you're far more likely to overlook the odd CG scene that doesn't quite fit. Full CG films (and long CG scenes) suffer from the fact that the CG becomes obvious, especially if it attempts to be photorealistic.
Full CG films that are proud to be animated films have it much easier. As a viewer you don't expect realism anyway. As long as everything runs smoothly and the animations are done in a consistent style the effect can be fully engrossing.
It's funny you should mention Forrest Gump. I've seen it in its entirety several times and thought the CG was very well used. Recently however I watched about 30 seconds when zapping during a commercial break. I watched Forrest carrying Captain Dan back to their lines and was stunned at how awful one of the CG effects looked.
The trick of course is being able to suspend your disbelief. When you're engrossed in the film you're far more likely to overlook the odd CG scene that doesn't quite fit. Full CG films (and long CG scenes) suffer from the fact that the CG becomes obvious, especially if it attempts to be photorealistic.
Full CG films that are proud to be animated films have it much easier. As a viewer you don't expect realism anyway. As long as everything runs smoothly and the animations are done in a consistent style the effect can be fully engrossing.
Yes, the unconscious "not quite right about it" is exactly what I mean.
I was watching _A Knight's Tale_ over the weekend, and noticed that when they zoomed over London and into the tilting arena, the colour of the wide shot was just a _hair_ off of the color of the dirt/buildings of the set. The line was very easy to see, a grey/brown transition.
The movements of Spiderman are glaringly obvious too. Good, just obvious.
Forest Gump? Come on, the color of LBJ's face is just plain wrong, the balance of Col. Dan requires legs even though they have been erased, etc. Where Forest is spliced into the b/w television shot, that works almost perfectly, but the rest of the CGI is just plain obvious. Good, sure, but obvious.
And it's not about money or time. The leaps of Legolas up the Oliphant in _The Return of the King_, a movie not lacking in either time or money, scream out as being against the laws of physics. It's technique, style, the fusion of physical reality into the art, that is missing, not computing power.
I recommend watching the "directors comments" track of _Finding Nemo_ if you can get a hold of the DVD. They jump out of the film to the animators who talk about the effort to make sand and dust look "real" under water. They spend huge quantities of time trying to make details that you don't consciously see, such as the silt in the water when Bruce the shark first meets Marlin and Dory, look real. Sure, everyone knows that fish don't have faces like Dory or Marlin, they don't talk, but the _environment_ the fake characters move through is important to the suspension of disbelief.
Oh well, we all really don't disagree here. It's just semantics and bickering. Now, how about a movie version of _The Probability Broach_, rendered through the Distributed.Net model of voluntary parallelism: Donated CPU cycles?
http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1
We have the story-board, all we need is key animation and voices.
I was watching _A Knight's Tale_ over the weekend, and noticed that when they zoomed over London and into the tilting arena, the colour of the wide shot was just a _hair_ off of the color of the dirt/buildings of the set. The line was very easy to see, a grey/brown transition.
The movements of Spiderman are glaringly obvious too. Good, just obvious.
Forest Gump? Come on, the color of LBJ's face is just plain wrong, the balance of Col. Dan requires legs even though they have been erased, etc. Where Forest is spliced into the b/w television shot, that works almost perfectly, but the rest of the CGI is just plain obvious. Good, sure, but obvious.
And it's not about money or time. The leaps of Legolas up the Oliphant in _The Return of the King_, a movie not lacking in either time or money, scream out as being against the laws of physics. It's technique, style, the fusion of physical reality into the art, that is missing, not computing power.
I recommend watching the "directors comments" track of _Finding Nemo_ if you can get a hold of the DVD. They jump out of the film to the animators who talk about the effort to make sand and dust look "real" under water. They spend huge quantities of time trying to make details that you don't consciously see, such as the silt in the water when Bruce the shark first meets Marlin and Dory, look real. Sure, everyone knows that fish don't have faces like Dory or Marlin, they don't talk, but the _environment_ the fake characters move through is important to the suspension of disbelief.
Oh well, we all really don't disagree here. It's just semantics and bickering. Now, how about a movie version of _The Probability Broach_, rendered through the Distributed.Net model of voluntary parallelism: Donated CPU cycles?
http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=1
We have the story-board, all we need is key animation and voices.
Quoting:Now, how about a movie version of _The Probability Broach_
Personally I'm still waiting for a movie set in the Warhammer 40000 universe. Sure it'll be cheezy, but fun too :-)
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