Roadrunner finally meets its match

We're all used to the so called 'churn' in mobile phones, where users switch from provider to provider and from phone to phone in order to keep on the leading edge of communications technology and to get the best deal available. Every time Apple launches a new version of the iPhone, consumers scramble to get their hands on the device and maintain their leading edge status. But you don't expect technology to be superseded quite so quickly when it comes to supercomputers. But that's just what's happened at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, where Roadrunner – the first supercomputer to break the petaflops barrier – has been retired after just a couple of years of number crunching. Built by IBM, Roadrunner integrated AMD Opteron processors and the PowerXCell 8i – a modified version of the processor in the Playstation 3. Roadrunner has been replaced by Cielo, a device which is said to be smaller, faster, more energy efficient and cheaper – just the same features for which consumers on the High Street look. Cielo's computing power comes from a blend of six and eight core AMD Opteron cpus. In all, there are more than 143,000 compute cores and 286Tbyte of DDR3 memory. Put it all together and you have a theoretical peak performance of 1.374Pflops. But even that pales into insignificance when compared to Titan, whose 300,000 cpu cores give it a peak performance in excess of 20Pflops One reason you don't expect supercomputers to be put out to grass is the cost – Roadrunner cost $120million. But the US Department of Defense – a prime user of Roadrunner and similar devices – has deep pockets. Despite its place in history and the fact that it can still crunch a few numbers, Roadrunner is not headed for a quiet retirement in some computing museum; it will be shredded. In the legendary cartoon series, Roadrunner always escaped the crazy schemes to catch it dreamed up by Wile E Coyote. Seems like the Acme curtain has fallen on this version of Roadrunner.