This is a huge win for Linux, IBM and Intel. Does it surprise anyone that the grid software is open-source? Nah, I doubt it. (:
[link|http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010809/tc/tech_supercomputer_dc_1.html|
National Science Foundation to Fund Supercomputer]
By Duncan Martell

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The National Science Foundation (news - web sites) said it will spend $53 million to build a massive computing grid that will be the most powerful of its kind ever completed and could lead to ground-breaking research that would have otherwise taken years, if not decades, to complete.

Called the Distributed Terascale Facility, or DTF, it will be used by four U.S. research centers for research in areas including molecular modeling for detecting diseases, cures and drug discovery, research on alternative energy sources, climate and atmospheric simulations, among others.

The current grid, which is the latest example of distributed computing that is becoming increasing popular, will be able to process 13.6 trillion calculations per second and will boast some 600 terabytes of data storage, the equivalent of 146 million full-length novels. To put that computational power in perspective, it would take one person with a calculator about 10 million years to tabulate the number of calculations the proposed grid could in a single second.
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The DTF, which will be connected using Qwest Communications International Inc.'s (NYSE:Q - news) 40-gigabit-per-second network, will be built by International Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM - news), using Intel Corp.'s (Nasdaq:INTC - news) Itanium microprocessors and the Linux (news - web sites) operating system. More than a thousand IBM servers and 3,300 next-generation Itanium McKinley chips will comprise the DTF.
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Unlike traditional supercomputers, which are typically housed at a single location, grids allow for pools of computing resources by connecting multiple supercomputers that are often in different locations via the Internet using open-source protocols from Globus. Globus is an organization seeking to set standards for grid computing similar to the standards that were set up to run the World Wide Web.