Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Although most enterprise environments may not need a visualization
studio of the magnitude of the
Stallion
installation, the combined power
of multiple computers for processing, storage, visualization, and render-
ing data is increasingly valuable. As distribution and industrial systems
grow larger and more complex, supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) becomes more complex as well, and financial calculations
become more deeply integrated into real-time data presentation. Large-
scale visualization systems become increasingly more valuable in the
enterprise. Most organizations now recognize the value of dual monitors
for workstations used in comparative analysis or document creation when
using reference materials.
Supercomputing
True supercomputers are the top of the line in terms of raw comput-
ing power. These systems are used in government studies, atmospheric
modeling, genetic and bioinformatics research, and similar uses requiring
massive throughput and calculations for large data sets. These systems
cost hundreds of millions of dollars and may consume enough power to
light all the homes in a fair-sized city.
Because supercomputers represent the current leading edge in tech-
nology, the designation is a constantly moving target. A list of the top
500 supercomputers in the world is updated every six months, with cor-
porations, universities, and governments competing to show the very
best performance. The top system in the world today is the Cray Jaguar,
which performs more than 1.75 million million (quadrillion) floating-
point mathematical operations (petaflops) each second. However, current
projects already in development are aimed at the 10-petaflop range of
processing and beyond.
Today's desktop systems sporting high-end CPUs and powerful mul-
ticore graphics processing units (GPUs) are capable of over 9 teraflops (9
trillion floating-point mathematical operations each second) of perfor-
mance individually. This power exceeds that of the #1 supercomputer
in the world only 10 years ago. Many researchers feel that this power
is a double-edged sword, making new forms of research and graphical
representation possible while also rendering legacy forms of password and
encryption protection weak in comparison to brute-force analysis.
