The exascale challenge

Stanford University, and chief scientist at graphics chipmaker NVIDIA, a company viewed by some as occupying a leadership position in resolving some key issues that exascale computing presents. SGI, manufacturer of mainframes, supercomputers, and high-powered workstations has begun experimenting with low-power processors in supercomputers. It is using the Atom processors Intel developed for handheld computers in place of the Xeons that are used in its top-end Altix UV machines. The Atom processors are used by, among others, Professor Stephen Hawking's Computational Cosmology Consortium (COSMOS) team based at the University of Cambridge. COSMOS selected a SGI Altix UV 1000 platform to support its research.