SDSC formally takes the wraps off Comet, a new petascale supercomputer that is over 2 million times more powerful than the Center’s first supercomputer.
When SDSC launched its first supercomputer, a Cray XMP-48 in late 1985, it was about as powerful as an iPhone is today. With the ability to perform almost two million billion operations or calculations per second, Comet is designed to transform scientific research by expanding computational access to a larger number of researchers working across a wider range of domains. The result of a National Science Foundation grant valued at almost $24 million including hardware and operating funds, Comet is designed to meet the needs of what is often referred to as the ‘long tail’ of science – the idea that the large number of modest-sized computationally-based research projects represent, in aggregate, a tremendous amount of research that can yield scientific advances and discovery.
