Sun and the Texas Advanced Computing Center recently unveiled a new supercomputer dubbed ‘Ranger,’ that can process 500 teraflops or 500 trillion floating point instructions per second.

The 500 teraflops of power will enable Ranger to process simulations and computations beyond anything we have seen before. This ability will give way to scientific breakthroughs and economic growth in all areas of society from weather forecasting to astrophysics.

Sun Constellation Linux Cluster

System Name: Ranger
Host Name: ranger.tacc.utexas.edu
IP Address: 129.114.50.163
Operating System: Linux
Number of Nodes: 3,936
Number of Processing Cores: 62,976
Total Memory: 123TB
Peak Performance: 504TFlops
Total Disk: 1.73PB (shared); 31.4TB (local)

The Ranger is based on Sun’s Constellation System which ushers in the new era of “petascale” computing in which high performance supercomputers approach one petaflop (one quadrillion floating point instructions) per second.

Using petascale architecture reduces switching elements by a factor of 300, cabling by a factor of six, and system footprint by up to 20%.Director, Texas Advanced Computing Center, Jay Boisseau says,

“Without a doubt, Ranger is the most powerful general-purpose supercomputing system for research ever.”

At the heart of Ranger are 72 Sun Fire X4500 storage servers, each with 48 500GB drives, yielding 1.7 petabytes of raw storage capacity and125 terabytes (TB) of memory.

Ranger also links two Sun Datacenter Switch 3456s, the world’s fastest InfiniBand switch to achieve an aggregate bandwidth of up to 110 terabits.

The system’s ultra-dense unibody chassis saves about 500 lbs. per rack when compared with traditional chassis and rack combinations. It also gives you 50 percent more compute power than its nearest competitor from HP, and 71 percent more than an IBM rack.

Texas Advance Computing Center Ranger User Guide

This great custom R2-D2 PC case modification is set to rock the worlds of all Star Wars fans. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be information regarding this particular mod, except that it could possibly have been made from the original R2 chassis.

The original R2-D2 chassis used in the movies was precision made to a high standard by an Australian firm called Petric Engineering. A closer look at this R2-D2 PC case reveals slight imperfections in the build quality but considering the thing looks this much like R2-D2, I don’t see many people complaining, just asking where on earth they might be able to pick one up.

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Whether or not the creator actually wanted to keep his name quiet is unclear but one thing is for sure, he has sparked off a lot of interest regarding R2 mods. There seems to be a bunch of R2 case mods popping up here and there, and one of the better ones we found actually had some information.

This R2-D2 case was created by Ken “TGS” Kirby for ExtremeTech’s Science Fiction Case Mod Contest. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to complete the mod in time for the competition deadline so didn’t make rank, however many have reported that R2 would of certainly taken the 1st prize had it been entered.

The idea started when Ken salvaged two R2-D2 legs from an old R2-D2 Pepsi cooler. The after a long search he managed to find a white plastic barrel for R2’s body and a weber grill for R2’s head, then the chassis was ready.

Ken’s finished mod comes complete with:

• ABIT IC7-G
• P4 3.2Ghz w/HT @ 3.71Ghz
• 2GB (4 x 512MB) of DDR400 RAM
• 120GB Hard drive
• Radeon 9800XT 256MB Graphics Card
• Creative 7.1 surround sound
• Asetek Vapochill Phase Change cooling @ -38C

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As the trend for R2-D2 mod’s catches on and begins to grow, perhaps it won’t be long before a large company patents the idea and sets up for mass production.

Following on from our previous post about Datamancer’s custom laptops, PC’s and steampunk devices, we’ve come across another handmade custom mod we thought was worth a mention.

Ukrainian, Valerie Beetle has spent countless hours’ hand carving this Gothic looking PC Tower. No word on what exactly was his inspiration but it seems like this guy must have some dark thoughts! Click On Image To Enlarge

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In the world of custom laptops and PC’s, steampunk specialist Richard R. Nagy aka Datamancer is on a level of his very own…… Know for creating some of the most original steampunk modifications his newest creation, the steampunk laptop is no exception.

Based on a Victorian music box made from brass copper and wood, the design is extremely intricate. Inside the elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents and antiqued copper keyboard and mouse lies a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 laptop. Other features include leather wrist pads, a customized network card, a power on switch that works by winding an antique key and a hidden power down switch.

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(Click Here To Read More…)

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