It is always good to see Edinburgh or Scotland for matter in the news for technological break throughs …
A supercomputer 10 times more energy efficient and up to 300 times faster than its traditional equivalents has been unveiled in Scotland.
Called Maxwell, the computer has been built at the University of Edinburgh and uses field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) in place of conventional processors.
Its Scottish developers believe Maxwell represents a new generation of compact and energy-efficient computers. Unlike ordinary general-purpose processors, FPGA chips can be programmed to perform very specific tasks. Once that programming is accomplished, FPGA chips can be much faster than performing the same tasks in software running on general-purpose chips.
The technology also has the benefits of requiring less space and running much more coolly than equivalent machines. Maxwell only takes up two computer racks at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center.
More information at…
http://news.com.com
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