High performance computing specialist Silicon Graphics has created a concept computer called Molecule using mostly off-the-shelf consumer electronics components that packs in 10,000 cores into a single rack.
While the computer sounds like a powerhouse, it isn’t real. But its a demonstration of how chips and memory using in personal computers can be brought together to create a powerhouse, says SGI.
Engineers at the company’s research labs say they drew up the system to show how consumer electronics technologies could be applied to overcome some of the limits supercomputers face today.
The Molecule computer can handle 20,000 threads of execution, about 40 times more than a single rack x86 cluster system and was designed around an Intel Atom N330 chip, says SGI.
