Geeks Blog » Science

Meet Australia’s New Supercomputer

noemi — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:54:06 +0000

Computer geeks around the world are now drooling over the recently launched supercomputer in Australia. Forget the supercomputers that you see in the movies or read about in the books. This one is the best of them all – at least according to the people behind the project.

The new supercomputer is known as the Vayu, and is the result of joint funding between the federal government, the CSIRO, and the Australian National University. The people who are in charge of operating and overseeing the Vayu, however, are from the National Computational Infrastructure.

So what is there to drool about? After all, just because a machine has been dubbed a supercomputer, it doesn’t mean that it’s THAT great, does it?

Let’s begin with this: the Vayu falls under the Sun Microsystems Constellation class. It has 11,936 processing cores – yes, THAT MANY. It’s not a SUPERcomputer for nothing. If you’re overwhelmed by the figure, just think of it as roundabouts 6,000 of your desktop PCs put together.

As for the memory, the Vayu has an impressive 36 terrabytes of RAM. That is about 18,000 times as much as the average PC at home has! The storage space, when formatted, is about 600 terrabytes. The unformatted state is 1 petabyte. Last, but definitely not the least, the Vayu can operate at 140 terraflops.

Impressed yet? Maybe the price of this big baby will take your breath away even more. From what I hear the Vayu costs AT LEAST $6 million. Whew.

Hitachi develops visceral fat technology

gecko — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:15:08 +0000

Here’s something geek doctors will take interest in.

Hitachi has developed a new fat simulation technology that can “simulate” visceral fat. This is shown through cross section images of the abdomen.

Visceral fat, the fats that are found inside our abdomen and peritoneal cavity are usually hard to see with present medical equipment.

The technology uses the body weight and the abdominal size to display the simulated image of the visceral fat. The equipment is being targetted towards people who want to lose weight or those with metabolic problems.

The targets for this device are people with metabolic problems characterized by excessive visceral fat development.

Kaku is a physic rock star

gecko — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:38:10 +0000

One of my personal heroes is theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. I think he’s one of the rock stars of Physics world. His ideas on string theory, M theory and all of the other esoteric branches of physics just beggar my imagination.

I’m such a big fan that I try to collect as many of his books as I can. Case in point is his new book The Physics of The Impossible. In this amazing book, Kaku talks about stuff that we only hear about in science fiction novels–perpetual engines, telekinesis, teleportation, time travel, invisibility. The thing here is that Kaku explains it using current physical laws and suggests that for some of these fanciful flights of the imagination, reality could well be possible.

Frankly, this book is miles better than the pulp SF books I devour.