Grape-Dr Supercomputer Sips Power And Wields A Tangled Cable Mess

Normally when we see pictures of fancy new super computers, the things are ummm... fancy. They are crammed into sleek cabinets typically with all the wires and cables hidden away so all you see is a cabinet of power standing there.

The Grape-DR super computer has eschewed all the fancy stuff in favor of a power sipping design and performance. The thing reminds me of the first network I wired years ago with cables so tangled and confusing I couldn't even figure it out.

The supercomputer has 65 Intel Core i7-920 CPU pairs along with a board using four Grape-DR accelerometer chips. Those accelerator chips are the key to the power sipping design of the machine. Each of the Grape-DR accelerator chips is capable of 200GFLOPS using only 50W of power. The machine is used at a Japanese university and research institute and was tops on the list of green super computers.