Most Expensive Computer in the World

Written by: tom Filed Under: Electronics, World on October 7th, 2006

The Japanese government estimates the Earth Simulator cost $400,000,000, making it the most expensive computer ever built. The budget for the Earth Simulator project was authorized for the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC) in 1997, and NEC Corporation made the winning bid for the Japanese project.

Earth Simulator Research and Development Center

By May 2002, the 640 processor node supercomputer was benchmarked with Linpack as having 35.86 TFlop/s performance. This gave it the top spot on the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites list until 2004 when IBM’s BlueGene/L supercomputer took its place using an architecture that cost less than half as much to implement.

Each processor node in the Earth Simulator contains 8 vector processors running at 500MHz with 16GB of shared memory, and the total main memory in the machine is 10 terabytes. The operating system running on the supercomputer is NEC’s UNIX-based OS called “SUPER-UX” which is used on NEC’s SX Series of supercomputers.

This expensive computer is used for a wide variety of international projects, most of which are related to atmospheric, climate, and oceanographic simulation.

(36) Comments

36 comments...What do you think?

Posted by Church and Tucker 1st February, 2007 at 12:48 pm
you could create the Matrix
Posted by vinny 27th February, 2007 at 1:20 pm
you can take the green pill and go back to fairy land or take the red and devl deeper into the rabbit hole
Posted by wrong 27th February, 2007 at 9:55 pm
actually the pills were blue and red, not green and red.
Posted by Ajith 7th March, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I could buy that.
Posted by Yearight 9th March, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Yeah right, you wish you could buy it… -.^
Posted by XSkildpaddenX 13th March, 2007 at 2:09 pm
“-the total main memory in the machine is 10 terabytes.” No loading time in games… COOOL!!! must own:P
Posted by bob 13th March, 2007 at 8:49 pm
u wish u could buy that u poor person hahaha matrix nerd.
Posted by WoW! 14th March, 2007 at 9:42 am
ZOMG! Spend less money!
Posted by Haris 20th March, 2007 at 1:29 am
I wish I had one of those
Posted by dippydo 22nd March, 2007 at 11:03 am
umm….will it run WOW?
Posted by EssRocks 16th April, 2007 at 7:17 am
im sure it would. my computer at home runs it lol.
Posted by mikey 26th April, 2007 at 4:57 am
thats pocket money
Posted by John Daly 26th April, 2007 at 5:14 am
does it come with a taylor made r7 425
Posted by Catman 6th May, 2007 at 8:40 pm
and like… then we decided to give it all like, you know wicked flames and stuff… cept we wanted it to look all cools an barneywell he was keepin it real i `spose lol.
Posted by Dakes 9th May, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Still doesn’t run STALKER with full AA though…
Posted by steve chen 10th May, 2007 at 1:08 pm
that is pocket money i have that in my pocket right now so i went an got them so does anybody want one for 1000 dallers
Posted by Computer Knowitall 14th May, 2007 at 7:06 am
Overall, one has summarized that your personal computer system includes above mediocre system performance, very impressive dear chaps
Posted by Pentium 1 14th May, 2007 at 7:13 am
I have used the same computer system for years, (Amstrad 92)and it still has state of the art performance that could be a serious rival of the Earth simulator, I would maybe consider swapping my Amstrad 92 for the Earth simulator!
Posted by stefan 5th June, 2007 at 4:35 am
I need to ask someone who knows: does this computer run win95 normally?
Posted by Jack 21st June, 2007 at 11:15 pm
10 terabytes isnt that amazaing when Aleinware is offering a 4 tetrabyte fully loaded gaming pc for 5 grand.
Posted by Crysis 22nd June, 2007 at 3:01 am
Hmmm.. It might even be able to play Crysis without lagging
Posted by stevo 25th June, 2007 at 7:57 am
i wonder if that thing has the internet on it?
Posted by brat 7th July, 2007 at 6:22 am
Think It’ll run Doom?
Posted by deniz 15th July, 2007 at 10:05 pm
lol lets hack it =D!
Posted by Name (required) 9th August, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I can afford it, but I shall only purchase it if it will run on AAA batteries.
Posted by ~BaDd_BoY~ 11th August, 2007 at 12:56 am
it will destroy doom!!! not just run it
Posted by Oscar Zuleta 11th August, 2007 at 1:01 am
Its too much of a computer. all you need is a nvidia sli,2gb ramn,maibe 2 terrabytes hardrive, core 2 extreme, 3 ghz and its costs $5000….Much less than that. by the way, its an
Posted by Eurybia 25th August, 2007 at 11:40 am
@Jack

Dude, that’s 10 terabytes of RAM, not HDD space…if Alienware is indeed offering 4 Tera’s of RAM for $5,000 then I think someone made a wee bit of a mistake!
Posted by Henry Ovansa 12th September, 2007 at 8:54 am
Under what classification can this 10 terabyte computer be?
Posted by Woody 13th September, 2007 at 5:34 pm
dude 10 tb of ram total with each node having 16gb of ram thats over 600 nodes thats one hell of a electric bill.
Posted by Dan2002sk8er 16th October, 2007 at 12:08 am
The specs on this computer might be impressive they could have saved a lot of money and bought 17 PS3s that would be 34 tera-flops processing power. I don’t think they would miss the 1.86tf. and it would only cost $8,483 that is a far way away from $400,000,000. so this doesn’t impress me.
Posted by albert 24th December, 2007 at 6:45 am
Finally, a machine that can actually run Crysis with full sliders and highest resolution. lolz.
Posted by JowMa'ammy 6th May, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Wow. Lol. Thats useless! Go get a few Xbox360s and Ps3s for god sake!
Posted by JMD 6th June, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Wow…..great system…. i sure hope its not operating with microsoft vista…hahaha
Posted by ragain 23rd June, 2008 at 12:27 pm
To people like Jack,

they are talking about 10terabytes of proccessing speed of information at one time.

the alienware is how much it can hold on the harddrive at one time.

Two complete different things.
Posted by ragain 23rd June, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Crap, also I forgot this was made back in 2004, we have made quite a few jumps in computer speeds since then.