A Closer Look at the Kaleidoscope Supercomputer update from November 2008

Here's a closer look at the Kaleidoscope Supercomputer, which packs 600 IBM PowerXCell 8i processors into eight cabinets on 22 square feet of data center floor space.

Data Center Knowledge

November 12, 2008

1 Min Read
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Kaleidoscope hardware

Yesterday we wrote about the Kaleidoscope Project, which is being hosted in the Houston data center of managed hosting provider CyrusOne. Kaleidoscope harnesses 120 teraflops of computing power to generate digital images of oil reserves buried thousands of feet below the seabed. At right is a closer look at the Kaleidoscope installation, which is powered by 600 IBM PowerXCell 8i processors in eight cabinets that occupy just 22 square feet of floor space, resulting in a power load of 750 watts a square foot in that area of the CyrusOne data center. Kaleidoscope is a collaboration between Repsol; the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (home to the MareNostrum supercomputer); 3DGeo, a Houston-based imaging company formed by Stanford University professor and seismic imaging pioneer Biondo Biondi; and Stanford University’s Stanford Exploration Project (SEP).

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Data Center Knowledge

Data Center Knowledge, a sister site to ITPro Today, is a leading online source of daily news and analysis about the data center industry. Areas of coverage include power and cooling technology, processor and server architecture, networks, storage, the colocation industry, data center company stocks, cloud, the modern hyper-scale data center space, edge computing, infrastructure for machine learning, and virtual and augmented reality. Each month, hundreds of thousands of data center professionals (C-level, business, IT and facilities decision-makers) turn to DCK to help them develop data center strategies and/or design, build and manage world-class data centers. These buyers and decision-makers rely on DCK as a trusted source of breaking news and expertise on these specialized facilities.

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