China's Tianhe-1A can now reach sustained performance levels of 2.507

United States is now owns the 2nd fastest SuperComputer Cray XT5 Jaguar, right next to that of China’s, of course leaving Google Plex aside.

Although you can Build yourself Supercomputers, it does cost millions when its built as a nation’s pride.

The Tianhe-1A, meaning Milky Way, was designed by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in China. It is the work of 200 scientists,  that makes groundbreaking performance  record of2.507 petaflops, or quatrillion calculations per second, making it the fastest system in the world today. Ordinarily the computer runs at 563.1 teraflops, or trillion calculations per second.

This giant comfortably costed over $88 million.

 Comparison :

As of June 2010, the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world combine for 32.4 petaflops of computing power and Chinese new supercomputer does 2.5 petaflops alone.

The whole system weighs 155-ton and is cooled by 103 refrigerator-like cabinets lined up on an area of about 1,000 square meters. The Tianhe-1A will be employed in calculations of seismic data for oil exploration, conduct bio-medical computing and help design aerospace vehicles.

GPU/CPU Details

Tianhe-1A is powered by 7,168 Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPUs and 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs. But the design is intuitive enough to beat 50,000 CPUs & half the floor space.

The second best, Cray XT5 Jaguar system has more than 19000 computers and 224,000 CPUs based on AMDs.

The performance scale was definitely not possible without GPUs. GPUs are redefining high performance computing. With the Tianhe-1A, GPUs now power two of the top three fastest computers in the world today. These GPU supercomputers are essential tools for scientists looking to turbocharge their rate of discovery.

Power Consumption:

Its not worlds Greenest Supercomputer, but Tianhe-1A is energy efficient, saving enough power to provide electricity to over 5,000 homes for a year, Tianhe-1A consumes only 4.04 megawatts, making it 3 times more power efficient compared to a 2.507 petaflop system built entirely with CPUs that would consume more than 12 megawatts.

However, affording its yearly bill still means $2.7 million hole.

The battle to build the fastest supercomputer has become a point of national pride as these high performance computers are used in a areas like defense, energy, finance, science. They are also used for drug discovery, hurricane and tsunami modeling, cancer research, car design, and studying the formation of galaxies.

Total Supercomputers US/UK/ASIA

Of the world’s fastest 500 supercomputers, the United States has 291, while Europe has 145 and Asia 49.

Sneak Preview: Gmail Has a New Look, Too

First Google rolls out Google+, then redesigns Google Calendar, and now it’s fiddling around with Gmail.

Hidden in the Themes section of the interface and named “Preview” and “Preview (dense),” the clean look is more spread out than the classic Gmail interface, basking in white space that makes it easier to read.

According to Google’s official Gmail Blog, the idea was to “strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as beautiful as it is powerful.” It’s all part of Google’s drive for a better experience that it calls “more focused, elastic and effortless” across each of its products.

The company says it will be gradually working on these new designs over the next few months. For now, you can get a sneak peak of the design you see here by going to the Themes tab in Gmail settings, and you’ll see the two new choices listed. The one at the top of this page is the “dense” version, and the other one is slightly more spread out.

Google’s calling these two preview themes “a sort of sneak peek” because it plans to make this design a permanent part of Gmail’s new interface, which “will eventually expand dynamically to accommodate different screen sizes and user preferences, but until then you can pick the information density that you prefer.”

If you don’t like either of these themes, all the other themes are still there, or you can simply stick with what you have now. I think this is a big improvement, making Gmail easier to read and more efficient to use. What do you think?

Facebook "like" is history now ;Google +1 Spreads Around the World

Google +1, the social recommendation feature that lets users indicate their favorite pages, is picking up steam. Google is continuing to push the feature – in both its webmaster button form and the social search results connected to +1s – by releasing the feature in numerous additional countries.

+1's Increasing Momentum

The thought that Google +1 was part of a larger social construct has gained both more weight and some contradictory evidence with the release of Google+ – the actual Google social site that we've been bleeding for over the last year (editor's note: check back for more coverage on Google+ later today on Search Engine Watch). While +1s are likely to get an integration with the Google social network, much in the same way that Facebook Likes are integrated with the Facebook news stream, the +1 feature is also meant to stand alone.

The +1 experiment started in March, webmasters got the button to add to their site earlier this month, Google has since added a +1 button to numerous properties (such as product pages and Blogger widgets), +1 counts – some of which are localized – are appearing in search results, and the product is continuing to gain momentum. As part of that snowball effect, Google is spreading +1 around the world.

Previously available in the U.S., the +1 button is now available to webmasters in the UK, Germany, Japan, and France, and many other countries will gain access shortly. More importantly, the socially promoted results will start appearing in country-specific search sites.

The Gravity of +1

As Google +1 continues to accelerate, there's a big question to be answered: Is this skyrocketing or a plummet toward earth that we're witnessing? It's not surprising that +1 has taken some time to get results, especially ones that are highly visible on the search engines.

As with many social web elements, +1s gain more power the more any user sees their friends +1ing. But will it be enough?

For Google, the +1 mechanism isn't a small deal. Beyond being the equivalent of a "like," which will be an important part of the Google+ social network, Google is relying on +1 to provide social search features.

If +1 doesn't succeed, Bing, Yahoo, Blekko, and anyone else who can establish partnerships with Facebook – the established social medium – will get a leg up on social search, a vital part of how information will be found in the coming years.