AMD powered Titan supercomputer lights up

Area bulbs might not do the same

AMD - logoIt looks like Oak Ridge is about to light up Titan, possibly the worlds fastest supercomputer. Powering this little beast has 18,688 nodes, each with a CPU and GPU.

If the lights dim about the time you are reading this story, you know Titan is up and running. Brownouts or not, each Titan node has one Opteron 6200, unnamed likely because it is a bespoke CPU, and an unnamed GPU. Given that AMD and Nvidia make GPUs, and AMD did not name the GPU, you can guess who probably makes a that part.

Expect a slurry of press releases Monday featuring analysts well paid by all involved parties say that Titan will solve all the worlds major problems by 2014 because it uses the part that they are paid to give, “unbiased opinions on”. At least that is how it usually goes. Back in this reality, expect the Supercomputer to make a lot of nifty graphics from complex simulations that result from a combination of nigh infinite iterations and a lot of electricity turned to heat.S|A

Editor’s note: AMD has requested that we point out that any brownouts are more likely caused by Frankenstorm 2012 than Titan.

Editor’s note 2: We just made that up, AMD requested nothing of us in writing this article.

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate