Britain s New Supercomputer

Britain’sNewSupercomputerByKatharineSanderson袁新选注【编者按】英国财政大臣近日在爱丁堡大学为其超级计算机HECToR正式揭幕。该计算机每秒一万亿次的超高速计算能力使英国再度跻身于计算机研发先进国家行列。目前世界排名第17的HECToR可以模拟超高频激光中的电子运动模式，而化学、物理及工程方面的研究人员也已经在排队等待用它来预测不同材料的特性及其在各种极端环境中的可能表现。Britain’S whizziest㈨new computer．going by the name ofHECToR(high—end computing terascale④resource)，officially opens today．The computer’S60 teraflops④(trillion operations per second)have been up and running since autumn2007，butChancellor of theExchequer@AlistairDarling today marks the official start by unveiling a plaque⑨atEdinburghUniversity’SAdvancedComputingFacility．HECToR will share itsEdinburgh home withBritain’S previous best computer--HPCx．HECToR is four times more powerfuI thanHPCx。which wilI continue to run．AlthoughHECToR ranks only17 th in the1ist of the world’S■ most powerful computers(as measured against the popularTOP500 list)，researchers say that it helps to put theUnitedKingdom back in the computer-crunching game．It pulls it back into the“premier league”，saysNeilSandham ofSouthamptonUniversity．SandhaITI，who will useHECTOR tO study aerodynamiCS⑥， says that the upgrade is welcome news in an ever-competitive international market．“The problem with theUnitedKingdom iS that it is only once every three or four years that we have a machine that ranks in the top20，”he says．①whizzy：精明的，新型的．②terascale：兆等级．③teraflop：万亿次浮点运算．④Chancellor of theExchequer：(英国)财政大臣．⑤plaque：饰板，匾额．⑥aerodynamics空气动力学．2008年第2期总第326期圈}。I愿℃。。。；；|j“It iS probably the first machine for the past six or seven years that really has lived up to expectations，”saysKenTaylor ofQueen’SUniversity inBelfast．who will use the compUter to model the movement of electrons⑦in high—frequency1aser1ight．Other groups，including some ofBritain’S biggest supercomputer users，already outsource their computing needs to international machines．For them，HECToR may make little difference．Work in all fieldsThe machine will be used by up to a thousand groups of scientists to model complex systems．Each user’S proposal for time on the machine will have to go through a peer-review process．Chemists，engineers and physicists will be lining up to use the computer to predict the properties⑧of materials．or to study llOW they behave under extreme conditions，for example．But it is the complexities of biological systems that will“blowHECToR away”， saysArthurTfew，the supereomputer’S directot．“The computational⑨demands on biological problems are immense@，”he says．The supercomputer is unlikely to change much for some ofBritain’s largest consumers of computer power，incl uding theMetOfficeHadleyCentre forClimateChange．TheMetOffice has its own five-teraflop supercomputer，and for chunkier problems，it,buses theEarthSimulator supercomputer inJapan．TheEarthSimulator was the world’S most powerful computer between2002 and2004，but has since slipped to30th place．For theMetOffice．compatibility@of systems iS more important than processing power--theMetOffice’S computer and theEarthSimulator use the same operating system，which1S different fromHECToR’S．HECToR will be used in collaborative work between theHadleyCentre and theNaturalEnvironmentResearchCouncil，says theMetOffice’SBarryGromett．’Fhe details of this are yet to be deri dPd．⑦electron：电子．⑧property：性能，属性．@computational：计算的．⑩immense巨大的．⑩compatibility：兼容性．@whopping：巨大的，强大的．E潞

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