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NY Times, Sept 8, 1995.
Intel Wins Contract to Develop World's Fastest
Supercomputer
By Lawrence M. Fisher
San Francisco, Sept. 7 -- The Intel Corporation said
today that it had won a a contract from the Department of
Energy to develop what it called the world's fastest
supercomputer.
The machine, to be built at an estimated cost of $45
million, would use 9,000 of Intel's forthcoming P6
microprocessors linked in a configuration known as
massively parallel. In recent years, massively parallel
computers using thousands of relatively inexpensive
off-the-shelf chips have stolen the performance lead from
traditional supercomputers like those made famous by Cray
Research Inc., which use far fewer, but far more powerful
processors.
Intel said its new supercomputer would be the first to
achieve the goal of calculating more than a trillion
floating-point operations a second, known as a teraflop.
The machine, to be kept at Sandia National Laboratories
In Albuquerque, N.M., would be used by Department of
Energy scientists to study a variety of complex problems,
foremost among them nuclear weapons safety.
"President Clinton is committed to ending underground
nuclear testing," Victor Reis, Assistant Secretary for
Energy Programs, said in a statement. "Computer
simulation will be a principal means for insuring the
safety, reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear
deterrent. We are embarking on a 10-year program to
advance the state of high performance computing to meet
national security objectives," he said. ...
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