'Gordon' supercomputer powered by flash

It's a thumb drive with the size and power of a supercomputer.

(Credit: San Diego Supercomputer Center)

In January, the San Diego Supercomputer Center will start the engines on Gordon, a supercomputer that uses flash memory extensively to handle massive amounts of data. Using flash as an integral building block means that the supercomputer will crank through data-intensive problems, such as analysing human genomes, 10 times faster than traditional designs.

The idea for using flash memory was shunned by commercial companies, San Diego Supercomputer Center officials told Wired. But they were able to convince the National Science Foundation about three years ago to invest the $20 million in the novel design. It's part of a trend in supercomputing to use alternate components, such as mobile-phone processors, and now memory, to improve performance for specific applications, or to lower power consumption.

Gordon, which is named after the 1950s science fiction hero Flash Gordon, has 300 terabytes of flash memory, which is thousands of times more than a tablet or mobile phone. With 64 terabytes of RAM, the supercomputer could ingest the entire Netflix streaming movie catalogue at 220 movies per second, and still have room for more, according to the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

The system is designed with "supernodes" of shared memory, an architecture that gives the computer outstanding I/O performance. Gordon set the record with 36 million input/output operations per second.

Researchers hope that it will be a powerful tool for genetic research, such as mapping genomes for personalised medicine, or creating models for climate change. "Every year, we double the amount of information being generated, and we now are being overwhelmed by the data we are able to produce with our own computers. So it stands to reason that we needed a new kind of computer," San Diego Supercomputer Center director Michael Normal said in a statement.

Gordon is no slouch in the compute-power department, either, with performance of 280 teraflops, or floating point operations, per second. Gordon ranks 48 on the list of the top 500 supercomputers.

The flash-heavy computer also fares well in power consumption, which has become one of the primary barriers to higher computing rates. Among the top 500 list, its megaflops-per-watt rating is higher than average.

Via CNET