'Personal supercomputer' goes on sale

A personal computer that packs the processing punch of a miniature supercomputer has gone on sale in the US. The DC-96 computer was developed by Orion Multisystems in California, US, and is aimed at scientists and engineers who routinely carry out computationally intensive calculations. About the size of small refrigerator, the DC-96 contains a "cluster" of 96 interconnected low-voltage microprocessors, each of which is capable of running at 1.2 Gigahertz, or 1.2 billion cycles per second. Together, these processors give the machine a peak computing power of 230 gigaflops, or the ability to carry out 230 billion complex mathematical operations every second. The machine also comes with a massive 192 gigabytes of memory. Such computer power does not come cheap, however, and one DC-96 costs $100,000. But Orion Multisystems claims the DC-96 offers an alternative for those who normally have to share supercomputer power within a laboratory or company. Rob Edwards, a microbiologist scientist at San Diego State University, US, has been testing the DC-96 for genomic research. "The system has allowed us to complete research tasks more efficiently than we would be able to with larger computer clusters," he says.

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