• Question: how much data can the worlds biggest computer store?

    Asked by Natasha to Anna, George, Jodi, Rob, Stefan on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      I think George or Rob might be able to give you a better answer to this, but I think it might be ‘Blue Waters’ which is in the US. It has 500 PB of storage – or half a million Terabytes.

    • Photo: Anna Scaife

      Anna Scaife answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Hey Natasha – there’s also a list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world here: http://www.top500.org which gets updated all the time. Another one I really like is the top 500 GREEN super computers (http://www.green500.org) because big computers need lots of power and this list tells you which super computers are the most energy efficient.

      Stefan – is that the Blue Water Cray? I think that one also has the best I/O (data rate) too.

    • Photo: George Ryall

      George Ryall answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      The top 500 is great for processing power (We currently have 3 of those up at our sister laboratory at Daresbury, and have had a couple here at RAL in the past), but less good for storage. As things get larger they tend to be made up of lots of components, so it’s hard to say were a single piece of storage ends and a collection of little pieces begins. Google might well have a claim with their Google File System.

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