Chemical Education Today
Letters Computer Speed and Avogadro’s Number The Chicago Tribune recently (1) reported that Argonne National Laboratory is installing and linking two advanced IBM 445 teraflop Blue Gene/P advanced super computer systems. Claims are that the system will be able to perform 445 trillion calculations per second making it the world’s fastest. “Put in human terms, every one of the 6 billion people on Earth would need to perform 70,000 calculations a second to match this supercomputer.” Put in chemical terms, it would still take the new, linked super computer over 43 years of continuous running to perform Avogadro’s number of calculations. But this demonstrates a profound advance in computer speed. Some years ago we wrote an article (2) indicating that the CRAY S-1, then one of the world’s fastest super computers, would require 1.9 million years to process Avogadro’s number of steps. Today’s best of the best is then about 44,000 times faster than the cream of the crop in 1986. Over the 21 year time interval, calculation speeds increased at the average rate of about 2000 times a year. Said another way, a job taking one second today would have required about 44,000 seconds in 1986, about 12.5 hours. Let’s hold our collective breaths. If next year’s computers are 2000 times faster than they are now, they will be able to perform Avogadro’s number of calculations in about 8 days. Is there any conceivable speed limit? Literature Cited 1. Van, J. Argonne Plans Double Dose of Computing. Chicago Tribune, Nov 1, 2007, p 1. 2. Poskozim, P. S.; Wazorick, J. W.; Tiempetpaisal, P.; Poskozim, J. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1986, 63, 125.
Supporting JCE Online Material
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/May/abs634_1.html Full text (HTML and PDF) with links to cited JCE article Paul S. Poskozim Department of Chemistry (retired) Northeastern Illinois University Chicago, IL 60625-4699
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Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 85 No. 5 May 2008 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
