ZDNet: Sun Eyes Supercomputing Glory

What's better than a computer that can do a petaflop? A computer that can do 2 petaflops.

Sun recently revealed its Constellation supercomputer, and the system will contain 3,456 ports on it's "Magnum" switch.

Sun's Magnum switch, based around the InfiniBand high-speed networking technology, is a honker. The largest InfiniBand switches on the market contain 288 ports, according to Bechtolsheim, and require leaf, or helper switches. (TACC's system will have two of the Sun switches.)

The density of ports, and the large number of them, creates a cascading effect in performance and pricing, he asserted. By deploying Magnum, which sports a "fat tree" style architecture where servers branch out from the trunk of switches, customers will need to install far fewer switches when building large computers, he said. Fewer networking boxes mean about one-sixth the number of cables.

"The cables cost more than the silicon" when it comes to the networking systems inside supercomputer clusters, he said.

And we've got quite a few odd stories dealing with networking today:

ComputerWorld: Shark Tank

Basically a tech-support horror stories blog, here's a few particular stories we think our readers might be interested in.

Soccer vs. The Internet
A barrage of traffic
Friday's Traffic Problems

ComputerWorld: IT ad favorites throughout the years

"80 Mbytes of storage for less than $12,000!" boasts one. In another, a woman in hot pants touts a modem that's, yes, "maybe even sexy." There's even a campy B movie celebrity hawking development software.

It was too much fun not to share. So after one of the best meetings ever, we bring you 10 of our favorite, most entertaining IT ads from four decades of Computerworld.

Worse Than Failure: Which Cable?

With miles of cables wired to thousands of jacks in a typical office building, an unlabeled block of cable is just as good as a dead one. Fortunately, the fine folks at Patrick McGoohan's office made sure to carefully label everything …