Japanese electronics giant NEC Corporation said on Wednesday it has begun selling the world’s fastest supercomputer.
NEC claims its SX-8 is the most powerful ”vector-type” supercomputer, with a sustainable data-processing speed well beyond IBM’s recently unveiled Blue Gene/L.
In September, IBM said its Blue Gene/L supercomputer had surpassed NEC’s Earth Simulator to become the world’s most powerful supercomputer.
IBM’s Blue Gene/L is capable of a sustained data-processing speed of 36,01 teraflops, or one trillion floating-point operations per second.
NEC said its newest SX series model has a peak processing speed of 65 teraflops and a sustainable performance of roughly 90% of that speed, or 58,5 teraflops.
The NEC and IBM supercomputers are different in structure. NEC says its SX-8, because of its vector architecture, ”delivers much higher sustained performance than scalar supercomputers” such as IBM’s Blue Gene/L.
”We have received 100 orders so far,” with the first models to be shipped to the United Kingdom’s national weather-forecasting service and the High-Performance Computing Centre in Stuttgart, Germany, said NEC managing director Tadao Kondo.
The Tokyo-based electronics maker aims to sell or rent 700 models in the first three years.
The monthly rental fee for the SX-8 is a minimum 1,17-million yen ($10 730) and the purchase price is 130-million yen.
Supercomputers are widely used to develop complex products such as new airplanes, automobiles and drugs. — Sapa-AFP