October 29, 2012---The U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has the world's fastest computer. Named Titan, the supercomputer can process 20 petaflops, putting it neck-and-neck with the previous top supercomputer. Oak Ridge's Director of Science, Jack Wells, describes some of Titan's features, as well as some of the lab's supercomputer users, which include one of the world's leading makers of diapers and potato chips.
Read full story here. UPDATE: On Nov. 12, 2012, the Top500 list, a ranking of computing systems around the world, named Titan the fastest in the world.
My name is Jack Wells. I'm the Director of Science at the Oak Ridge Leadership Facility. We're announcing the best supercomputer for scientific research.
It's more energy efficient, and more powerful than previous generations of our supercomputer and it's enabled by disruptive computer technology known as graphical processing units.
This GPU, which is a commodity product, which has its own market driving innovation, the Gaming market, enables us to further extend our supercomputing capabilities with a marginal increase in electricity consumed.
It's not so much about having the leading supercomputer in the sense of the Top 500,
We offer our resources to companies, big and small, to come work with us and take a look into the future to try a problem that's bigger than many of them can do so in their own resources. Even large first-class companies like Proctor and Gamble, and General Electric and United Technologies are working with us on some of their most difficult problems.
Designing an aircraft, building a nuclear reactor, turbo-machinery to power engines or compressers, to compress carbon dioxide, to inject it under the ground, these are tremendous challenges- first-rate in complexity and scientific challenge.
TEXT: Do companies use supercomputers for familiar products?Yes! Manufacturing of diapers is a very complex task! And it's not just putting the diaper together. It's that they can do it a rate of about a thousand a second! They do it at a very, very high rate. Such a high rate that the aerodynamic flow of air around the diaper is a significant part of their engineering design.
Likewise for Pringles potato chips, they had to tweak the shape of the potato chip to keep it from flying off the line. "
