INTEL MACHINE BREAKS COMPUTER SPEED RECORD.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. It's not quite Star Trek  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. computer technology yet, but
it's a step toward creating virtual reality.
Intel Corp. joined Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary on Monday to announce Intel has broken the supercomputer speed record with a machine that performs more than 1 trillion calculations per second, giving scientists a tool to simulate everything from nuclear explosions to an entire strand of human DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. . The machine, which crunches numbers with a technique called massively parallel See MPP. computing, was built by connecting thousands of the same kind of Intel Pentium Pro microchips found in standard computers. ``It's an astonishing a·ston·ish tr.v. as·ton·ished, as·ton·ish·ing, as·ton·ish·es To fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. achievement,'' O'Leary said. ``We have this ultracomputer growing from really desktop microchips.'' One of the chief developers of the project called it a milestone that marks the beginning of a computer age that will allow incredibly powerful machines to be assembled from simple building blocks. ``It's a baby step toward being able to do a real simulation of the physical world, which is what the `holodeck' is all about on `Star Trek,' '' said Justin Rattner, an Intel supercomputer expert. |
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