ITNews

The Yahoo News posting Roadrunner is fastest computer by the Associated Press, describes the supercomputer.

(Credit: Associated Press)

A few of its impressive attributes are:

To put the computer’s speed in perspective, if every one of the 6 billion people on earth used a hand-held computer and worked 24 hours a day it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.

The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory.

The cost: $100 million.

Turek said the computer in a two-hour test on May 25 achieved a “petaflop” speed of sustained performance, something no other computer had ever done. It did so again in several real applications involving classified nuclear weapons work this past weekend.

A “flop” is an acronym meaning floating-point-operations per second. One petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second. Only two years ago, there were no actual applications where a computer achieved 100 teraflops — a tenth of Roadrunner’s speed — said Turek, noting that the tenfold advancement came over a relatively short time.

Impressive!

…John

The iLounge posting Apple TV 2.0 vs. Blu-Ray, DVD & HD Cable: The Comparison provides an extensive comparisons using the same material on each technology.

(Credit: iLounge)

Bottom Line

From where we stand, frequent and quality-sensitive video watchers will find Netflix or Blockbuster to be better month-to-month values for HD video rentals than Apple TV or on-demand cable services, while Apple TV provides an option that’s in the upper middle of the pack on quality and the best on convenience, so long as you’re willing to pay the $229-$329 cost of entry. The question is: are you?

To my eye, Apple TV is looking good, especially since it is running HD at 720p.

I have an Apple TV on my lust list. I may wait until it supports 1080p. The Robert X. Cringely’s weekly column I, Cringely posting Blu-ray Blues: With the HD War Over, Why Aren’t We Seeing Blu-ray Drives in Apple Computers? discusses and hypothesizes about Apple and 1080p.

Here are some interesting tidbits from the posting.

Jumping to 1080p is a huge challenge for iTunes. Just look at the comparative sizes of the QuickTime HD trailers for the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Apple’s own web site. The 480p trailer (that’s standard definition and slightly better quality than the 640-by-480 shows most people download through iTunes now) requires 47 megabytes while the 720p file is 78 megabytes and the 1080p version requires 126 megabytes. The trailer runs just under two minutes (1:51). The three prior Indiana Jones films were 115, 118, and 126 minutes, respectively, so let’s take the average and figure this new movie will come in right at two hours in length. Extrapolating from the size of the trailer, then, a good guess about the ultimate file size for the H.264 download versions of this upcoming blockbuster are 3048 megabytes, 5059 megabytes, and 8172 megabytes, respectively.

Apple faces a number of challenges offering files of this size for download, the least of which is economic. Yes, it will probably cost Apple four times as much to offer downloads of a 1080p version of a movie than its 640-by-480 version, but the market is already expecting to pay an HD premium, at least for a while, so money isn’t really a major factor. The real speed bumps are the sheer impact of a true volume HD service on the Internet, itself, and the sad fact that most Macs can’t even play 1080p video. They simply aren’t powerful enough.

As for giving Macs enough grunt to play 1080p video, I explained more than a year ago that Apple has privately committed to putting an H.264 encoder/decoder chip in its entire range of machines. That specific chip began sampling last July so Apple should be able to start shipping the new Macs any time soon, certainly long before Christmas.

Most interesting, Robert.

…John

A terabyte disk drive stores one million million bytes of data. The Register posting Four 1TB hard drives on test tests and rates 4 drives.

The results are:

Product Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000

Verdict The Hitachi set a decent benchmark for performance as a standalone drive.

Rating 70%

Product Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ

Verdict It’s a straight fight between the Seagate and Samsung, and on balance we favour the Sammy despite its higher price.

Rating 85%

Product Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340NS

Verdict The Seagate delivers sterling performance with the minimum of fuss, yet it is the cheapest of the drives on test.

Rating 80%

Product Western Digital WD1000FYPS RE2-GP

Verdict We’re all in favour of reducing our dependence on electricity but the RE2-GP lagged behind in every one of our tests.

Rating 60%

Bottom Line

All four Terabyte drives in this round-up offer a colossal amount of storage at a very reasonable price. The Hitachi is showing its age but still delivers decent performance, but we were less convinced by the green power saving features of the Western digital. If you want high performance – and who doesn’t? - it’s a straight fight between the Seagate and Samsung, and on balance we favour the Sammy despite its higher price.

Read the posting for details and performance graphs.

…John

The Information Week posting Mac Buyer’s Guide: Which Apple Should You Pick? begins by saying

We’ve tested the Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, the iMac, the Mac Mini, and the XServe. There’s not a bad Apple among the bunch, and some are truly superb. We’ll help you choose one that’s right for you.

Maybe that most recent e-mail virus was the last straw. Maybe you’ve been longing for a computer that “just works” and that you actually look forward to using. Maybe Microsoft Vista finally just sent you right around the bend. Perhaps it was that “Mac guy” on the commercials. Or maybe you are the “Mac guy.”

My lust list contains a Mac Pro.

(Credit: Apple)

My Mac G4 is serving me well. My PhotonJohn.com high dynamic range imaging (HDRI), super-resolution (SR), and panorama panels, rendering processes are taxing it.

(Credit: Apple)

My lust list also contains a MacBook Pro for the photography studio, so I can control a tethered New and Improved Canon 450D / Rebel XSi camera. Once the camera is positioned for a shot, all fine tuning and firing is done from the MacBook Pro. The image is then downloaded for close inspection and initial rendering.

(Credit: Apple)

I’m a happy Mac camper. When I need to work on a Windows machine, I Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) to a Windows XP workstation.
I’ll be able to run Windows directly on the two Mac computers on my lust list using VMware Fusion.

…John

The News.com posting A flash memory notebook: The sounds of silence is a first hand account of living with a solid-state drive installed in a notebook.

(Credit: Samsung)

Flash drives, which store data in NAND flash memory, don’t require motors or spinning platters. Thus, there are no whirring mechanical noises.

Is the quiet and extra battery life worth nearly a $900 premium? In a word, no, but you’ve got to look at the future. Although in the price stratosphere now, flash drives will start to compete more directly with drives over the next four years. Flash memory density continues to increase at a rapid pace, doubling almost every year, and large manufacturers like Samsung, Toshiba, SanDisk and Intel have or are opening factories geared at churning out flash. Taken together, this will lead to an easy availability of chips, better capabilities, and recurring price wars.

The drawback is the price. The same Latitude with an 80GB standard hard drive currently sells for $869 on Dell’s site. Swapping the drive for a 64GB flash hard drive adds $899 to the price. The upgrade more than doubles the price of the notebook to $1,768 and slightly eliminates storage.

Let the price wars begin.

…John