It might not seem like a bit unit (see picture below), but this computer is probably the "densest" system ever build for parallel calculations. A single system holds up to 14 of the boards, each containing 64 CPUs that in turn have 64 processor cores. That makes for 57,344 processors. It is capable of 14 trillion operations per second.

Sun showed off its Project Colonoy at the Sun Labs Day in Mountain View, CA last week. The system is build to do "cellular automata".

This system might some day allow traffic managers to do real time backup predictions. You enter all the streets, driveways, curves, highways and on and off ramps into a system, add the traffic patterns of the day (either real time or average loads). And then it gets interesting: you have an accident on Main Street with all lanes blocked? Enter it into the system and it will tell you how best to reroute traffic.

Other applications for the Colony (not to be confused with super computers like IBM's Blue Gene) can be found in weather forecasting, simulating the airflow around objects (for car designers) or predictions around the growth of cells and how they affect their neighbours.

03 May 2005