Crunching Terabytes Down Under

http://blogs.amd.com/work/2011/12/ [...] own-under/

December 14, 2011 by John Fruehe


DownUnder specializes in collecting huge amounts of data and has thousands of CPU cores that are deployed to help take the data that comes from the depths of the ocean and turn it into a viewable model of what lies below.

A ship, outfitted with special air compressor guns is firing into the ocean and special hydrophones that are outfitted on 12KM cables pick up the “reflections.” This data – terabytes of data – is then correlated to help draw a picture that researchers can use to figure out the underlying makeup of the earth in their search for value under the earth’s crust.

Cool effort they have going on there. It is simply amazing to consider the computing horsepower that is available today and the relatively small footprint it can reside in.

Seems this would be an ideal distributed computing project as well.

Good point, but there are a lot of groups out there looking at all sorts of things. One never knows how these things will be received by the public.

Still Folding@Home is one of the most worthy of consideration. No argument from me, my friend.