So last week, an elderly gentlemen came in our Boston computer service shop. When he was in college in the 1950s, the super computer was all they had. So today, I read an article that kind of reminds me of that. Here is the world’s largest ARM Super computer.
We know most of these mega machines because of their super speed. However, there is a new kid in town. They call this new kid Astra, the world’s largest ARM super computer. I looked up what ARM means, but the acronym changed so much over the years. So let’s jut leave it at ARM. It’s the largest computer of it’s kind.
We can think the US Dept. of Energy for creating this. They’re using it for nuclear energy and research. A Calvium Thunder X2 ARM processors power it. These are even faster and more powerful than one of the greatest processors of this age, the x86 CPU. There is a greater need for better data transfer. However, here are some mind boggling numbers. Astra has 145,000 cores. It also has 2,592 dual processing servers. Then add the eight memory channels. Compare that to the six memory channels the x86 CPU has. It’s one of the top 100 fastest super computers in the world today. I expect it will make it’s way up the charts as time goes on.
A place called Sandia National Laboratory already adopted and runs this super computer. Their main goal is to manage America’s nuclear stockpile. That’s no small feat, for any IT support company, any computer anywhere. We don’t know when they’re going to perfect this super computer. And don’t hold your breath. Because something this massive and this great is going to take time to get better. It will also take error, and lots of error. What do you think of the world’s largest ARM super computer?