Charlie Sorrel
Gear

Britain Gets New Super Computer: You Can Call Me HAL

The University of Edinburgh is set to reveal its new toy, a £113 million ($221 million) supercomputer named HECToR (High-End Computing Terascale Resource). The huge machine has the power of 12,000 PCs, and white-coated boffins will “push forward the boundaries of knowledge” at the speed of 60 Teraflops 63 million calculations per second. HECToR was […]

The University of Edinburgh is set to reveal its new toy, a £113 million ($221 million) supercomputer named HECToR (High-End Computing Terascale Resource). The huge machine has the power of 12,000 PCs, and white-coated boffins will "push forward the boundaries of knowledge" at the speed of 60 Teraflops 63 million calculations per second.

HECToR was designed and built by Cray, the US manufacturer synonymous with super computers, parts of which can still be found on ebay. When an IT worker tried to install BioShock, HECToR was reported to have said: "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that".

Britain's fastest supercomputer unveiled [Reuters]