A load of crap from an idle brainPersonal, Movies, Music, IT, India, Singapore, Politics, Fun

There was a PC show here in Singapore – Comex 2008.  Had been wanting to buy a cheap and good laptop and also a digital camera (if my budget permitted).  And, i got both my wishes fulfilled

Acer Extensa 5620

Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB DDR-2 RAM
320 GB Hard disk
15.4″ display
DVD RW
Bluetooth, Wirelss WIFI link, Gigabit network card
Integrated Crystal Eye 0.3 Miegapixel webcam

Nikon Coolpix L16

A 4GB memory card, a tripod, scratch resistant cover for the display LCD free along with the camera.

Always wanted to get a Digital SLR camera (preferably Nikon) , but then felt that the money is better spent investing.  Else, i would have another expensive toy rotting away in some corner of the house.  Just like the others. Anyway, am happy

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India has surprisingly broken into the Top Ten in a much-fancied twice-yearly list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, marking a giant leap in its push towards becoming a global IT power. A cluster platform at Pune’s Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a Tata subsidiary, has been ranked fourth in the widely anticipated Top 500 list released at an international conference on high performance computing in Reno, Nevada.

It is the first time that India has figured in the Top 100 let alone Top Ten of the supercomputing list. The list, which is usually dominated by the United States, is also notable this time because it has five new entrants in the Top Ten, with supercomputers in Germany and Sweden up there with the one in India.

The fourth-ranking Tata supercomputer, named EKA after the Sanskrit term for one, is a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. CRL has integrated this system with its own innovative routing technology and to achieve a 117.9 Teraflop or trillions of calculations per second.

The No. 1 position was again claimed by the BlueGene/L System, a joint development of IBM and the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

While the US is clearly the leading consumer of high power computing systems with 284 of the 500 systems, Europe follows with 149 systems and Asia has 58 systems. In Asia, Japan leads with 20 systems, Taiwan has 11, China 10 and India 9.

The second ranked supercomputer in India, rated 58th in the Top500 list is at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Others are ranked 152, 158, 179, 336, 339,340 and 371.

Full article here.

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