NEC claims 10-Petaflop supercomputing breakthrough
NEC AND the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed the technology for a ten-Petaflop supercomputer. The foundation of this beast is a network of optical interconnections between nests of chips. The Japanese government says it could be ready by 2010.
Ten petaflops is something like 10 quadrillion floating point operations per second.
The optically connected chips can talk to each other at 25 gigabits per second, so between them they can calculate at warp factor speeds (there’s no figures available. Depends how many chips are aggregated). That’s a 250 per cent increase on the fastest speed that data can limp along cables.
The prototype converts electrical signals into optical signals using laser diodes, says our man at the Nikkei, and its connector bundles 1,000 fibres together to bring together the worlds most powerful aggregation of neighbouring chips.
Two questions arise. What’s the collective noun for an aggregation of chips? A virtual of chips? A bag? It’s been proved that the best way to bring an entire company together in one room, is to come back from your lunch break with a bag of chips. Forget video conferencing. People you thought had left the company will suddenly materialise.
And secondly, how many of these ten-Petaflop supercomputers will the world need? I reckon five, tops. One for each major continent across the globe. I only know that because a visionary from IBM told me. And that was T.Watson back in 1943. µ
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WOW finally a computer that can run Crysis.
Maybe that should be something in the range of 25GBps and it would still be pretty slow considering that the non-optical AMD HyperTransport and upcoming Intel CSI QuickPath are capable of 20-25GBbps and even more... 
Maybe that's 25Tbps what NEC achieved, uh?
Nick:

Have they developed an interconnect or an entire system? Your article mentions an optical interconnect but no other hardware. Where is the 10PFLOPs?
SKYNET!!!
There is absolutely no written or oral evidence that T. W. Watson ever said: "“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” 

AT adds: There is now.
Will that make it "Vista Capable"?

AT adds: The next reader who makes that 'joke' will be banned from the Inquirer for life.
About time too, there's been optical switches for ages providing the framework for many a megacluster. Would someone please put them on a bus already. Or just move directly to superconductors or ultraconductor buses, do not pass Go.

The bus conductor takes a message ticket, stamps it, and you get off at your destination address. Ding ding.
25 gb/sec at each unit times units used. Thats actual data so much more than mere Total sq wave count, as comparison is making. Id use it to track NYC. Each array member is ~500 TV station channels? I use it for simple double aggrator to put Best of Todays O/S ?ultie6.66? to speak notch under: theinquirer.org subtle triple agravator tome'.
t.drashek
Somebody is trolling for a cheeky new marketing moniker for a new chippery booth? £'s & £'s £ish & €hips! €mpire €hips! Angglomeration. Trannie-sphere. Ship-O'Chips...
I'm really trouffle-pigging, here. So you may want to contact Gordon Ramsay.
I don't believe anything the japs say. I don't trust them since I saw them say they discovered heaven before the US did in South Park Colorado. They had the set with flying angehls on strings.... ;p

I though the Americans were going to build Colossus first. Ah well. I guess Guardian will have to do.

All hail the upcoming robot overlord(s).
While the use for big computing tasks - oil reservoir modeling, molecular drug modeling - is there, it will never be usefull for users. By the time it would be afordable, Windows would have increased in complexity so that it would still take 2-3 minutes to boot, and 30 seconds to open Word.
Francis's rule: Bloatware trumps hardware improvements.
will it have a "Vista Ready" label ? ^_^