SKA Telescope To Provide a Billion PCs Worth of Processing 186
Sharky2009 writes "IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day)."
thousand million? (Score:5, Funny)
Could we get that in LoC's? Also, could we stick to the standard "one million thousands" unit, please?
Ska? (Score:3, Funny)
Let's hear it for Reel Big Fish and the Pietasters! Is there a Reggae telescope?
What? (Score:4, Funny)
SKA telescope? Madness!
Re:Ska? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, IBM, you dropped your telescope.
Someone should pick it up, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.
Re:thousand million? (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/how_big.htm [jamesshuggins.com]
So roughly 20 million Library of Congresses (20mm LoC)
Re:since when did slashdot provide BS units? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, how is a PC a unit of processing ability? And one thousand million GB sticks is an Exabyte (hence the name). Perhaps you can just say 10^18 bytes. This is slashdot, not msnbc.
Some of us went and got an MBA; upon which, it knocked tens of points off of our IQ.
Now, 10 carrots 18? 18 what? Rabbits?
It should read 10 carrots and 18 rabbits!
And people say I'm stewped!
Re:thousand million? (Score:5, Funny)
could we please stick to serious measures of information within the field of IT instead of silly printer paper units, how many station wagons full of 9 track tape is that?
Ahhh, but can it... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:since when did slashdot provide BS units? (Score:4, Funny)
That was a lame way of putting the data numbers (Score:5, Funny)
First of all, no one would be using manual storage to transfer the data.
Just throw up some numbers that makes sense to us. Like 99,420.5393 gigabit/second [google.com].
Most large ISPs use OC-192 [wikipedia.org] as the backbones of their infrastructure. You'd need more than 10,200 [google.com] of those to handle that data load, and that's ignoring the overhead.
Or to put it into numbers that the RIAA can understand: 1.5707309 * 10^9 [google.com] music CDs every single day.
At 15 pieces of music per CD and $80,000/song that's $1.88 * 10^15 dollars/day flowing through that network. That's 632 times larger than the US federal budget for 2008 [wikipedia.org].
No wonder the music industry is in trouble!
Re:thousand million? (Score:5, Funny)
Here's the way it works:
In the US and the UK, the number is officially called "billion." In India, it's called "100 Crore." Australia officially has no idea how they do their numbers, and Canada doesn't even know what language it speaks. There are no other English-speaking countries of consequence.
Therefore, "billion" is the most acceptable term for international English-language writing.
Re:The race is on... (Score:1, Funny)
The only reason MSFT would salivate is because they charge per core.
Re:Wrong problem (Score:3, Funny)
Astronomy comes up with pretty pictures. Other areas not so much so. So what would you rather have you tax money go to... Pretty pictures. Or columns of crunched numbers.
A thousand million 1GB memory sticks? (Score:2, Funny)
They're gonna need a LOT of pigeons.
Re:Where are they going to store it all? (Score:5, Funny)
From the FAQ... (Score:4, Funny)
From the FAQ:
How far can this telescope see?
A: ONE STEP BEYOND!
Re:Imagine a... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:since when did slashdot provide BS units? (Score:3, Funny)
6 feet and 4 inches.
Cloud-based? (Score:3, Funny)
the SKA is unlikely to use ... a cloud-based approach
Well, duh. You can't see anything when it's cloudy.