AN ARTICLE about the world's top 500 supercomputers on The Inquirer website informed reader George Neil: "The Chinese National University of Defence Technology houses the 3.12 million core Tianhe-2 cluster, which has 1 petabyte of RAM, uses a proprietary interconnect dubbed the TH Express 2 and consumes 17.8 GWatt [gigawatts] of electricity." It was still saying this at the time of writing.
"Wow! That's a computer!" George comments.
Readers puzzled by his reaction may like to know that, in round numbers, the total UK peak electricity demand is 60GW on behalf of a population of 60 million people – so London, with 8 million, could be expected to have a peak demand of 8GW, less than half of the stated consumption of the Tianhe-2 cluster.
Or, to put it another way, a European electric kettle uses a shade over 3kW, so 17.8 GW would be the equivalent of 6 ...
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