Sun Explores the Universe

By Doug Barney

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Santa Clara,CA) must be the Avis of supercomputers. Why else would the company claim its new Ranger is the world’s “second fastest” computer?

The $30 million machine has more RAM than a Kingston assembly line (123 terabytes)  and enough disk space to store nearly every photo ever taken of Britney Spears (1.7 perabytes).

The Ranger was designed with the help of the Texas Advanced Computer Center at the University of Texas in Austin. The supercomputer is part of TeraGrid, a shared network of supercomputers. Overall, TeraGrid has some 30 petabytes of data (contained in separate databases based on discipline) and 750 teraflops of crunching power.

Among other projects, researchers are using Ranger to explore what happened after the Big Bang and before planets, stars, and galaxies all took form.

What’s the most powerful computer you’ve ever worked on? What is your ideal machine?  Write me at [email protected] and I’ll publish your note in our next newsletter. 

Here’s what the Texas Advanced ComputerCenter had to say.

Here’s how Sun describes Ranger.