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Sunday, April 21, 2013

Inhabitat's Week in Green: Ekinoid, HDlive ultrasound and the world's lightest electric vehicle

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

It's been an exciting week for green building as Inhabitat reported that some of the world's top architects unveiled plans for high-tech developments with light environmental footprints. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) won an international design competition for Europa, a new green-roofed city outside of Paris. Construction began last week on a new solar-powered stadium for the Euro 2016 football championship designed by Herzog & de Meuron. San Francisco celebrated the reopening of the Exploratorium this week in a new net-zero building along the city's waterfront. In Mexico City, a helipad on the roof of an office building was converted into a co-working space with a gorgeous rooftop garden. And we also profiled the Ekinoid, a spherical, self-sufficient home that sits on stilts and is built to withstand disaster.

In an announcement that's sure to turn the electric car market on its head, Fiat announced that its new all-electric 2013 500e would sell for as little as $20,500, after incentives and rebates are included. In other green transportation news, Boosted Boards unveiled the world's lightest electric vehicle (spoiler alert: it's a skateboard). Outrider USA has launched a line of electric, three-wheeled recumbent bikes that can hit speeds of up to 40 MPH. Electric carmaker Fisker Automotive is in serious trouble, as lawsuits and debts pile up. And the all-electric SportStar EPOS airplane made its first 30-minute flight this week.

Scientists continued to make amazing advances in renewable energy technology. A South Korean team engineered a novel device that uses both sunlight and vibrations to generate energy. Scientists in Illinois developed a tiny lithium-ion battery that is 2,000 times more powerful than rival batteries and can charge 1,000 times faster. Meanwhile, researchers in Switzerland are using tiny tin nanocrystals to develop lithium-ion batteries that can store twice as much energy. Wind power is on the rise as well -- a new report finds that the US added 6,700 new turbines across the country in 2012, boosting capacity by 28 percent.

In other green design news, we've been reporting live from the Milan Furniture Fair, where designers unveiled gorgeous super-energy-efficient lights at the 2013 Euroluce exhibition. Also at Milan Design Week, designer Tobias Tøstesen unveiled an amazing oversized chandelier made from 8,000 Lego bricks. Electronics giant Panasonic celebrated its 100th anniversary by donating 100,000 solar lanterns to people who lack access to electricity in developing countries. GE unveiled its new HDlive ultrasound, which shows startlingly clear 3D images of babies in utero. Researchers at the Sheffield Centre for Robotics developed a vibrating "tactile helmet" that helps firefighters navigate in the dark, and for Earth Day (April 22nd), we've rounded up a list of six fun and meaningful ways to celebrate the Earth without plundering your wallet.

By: Unknown On 9:12 PM

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Titan supercomputer to be loaded with 'world's fastest' storage system

If you figured Titan's title of the world's most powerful supercomputer would give the folks at Oakridge National Laboratory reason to rest on their laurels, you'd be mistaken. The computer is set to have its fleet of 18,688 NVIDIA K20 GPUs and equal number of AMD Opteron processors paired with what's said to be the planet's speediest storage system, making its file setup six times faster and giving it three times more capacity. Dubbed Spider II, the new hardware will endow the number cruncher with a peak performance of 1.4 terabytes a second and 40 petabytes of storage spread across 20,000 disk drives. Behind the refresh are 36 of Datadirect Networks' SFA12K-40 systems, which each pack 1.12PB of capacity. For more on the herculean rig's upgrade, hit the jump for the press release.

Show full PR text

DATADIRECT NETWORKS TO BUILD WORLD'S FASTEST STORAGE SYSTEM FOR TITAN, WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL SUPERCOMPUTER

-- New Oak Ridge National Laboratory Storage System Will Deliver Over One Terabyte Per Second in Throughput to Drive Radical Advances in Science and Big Data Analysis, Essential to DOE and Office of Science Missions --

Lustre User Group Conference 2013, SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – April 16, 2013

News Facts
In support of its new Titan supercomputer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has selected DataDirect Networks (DDN) to build the world's fastest storage system to power the fastest supercomputer in the world.

ORNL is a national multi-program research and development facility managed by UT-Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy. The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) was established at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2004 with the mission of providing leadership computing for scientists working on some of the world's most pressing problems.

Titan is designed to deliver a peak capability of over 27,000 trillion calculations per second, or 27 petaflops, a system that is over ten times more powerful than previous generations of ORNL computers.

For the growing number of problems where experiments are impossible, dangerous, or inordinately costly, advances of this compute magnitude offer the benefit of immediate and transformative insights in energy, national security, the environment and the economy, as well as to answer fundamental scientific questions.

Using DDN's SFA12K-40 storage systems as the backbone for Spider II, this new file storage system is designed with 40 petabytes of raw capacity and is capable of ingesting, storing, processing and distributing research data at unprecedented speed. This amount of storage capacity is equivalent to more than 227,000 miles of stacked books – or the distance from ORNL's facility in Oak Ridge, TN to the moon – and enables ORNL to dramatically increase Titan's computational efficiency and deliver vastly more accurate predictive models than ever before.

As the de facto standard in storage for the world's leading supercomputers, DDN continues to push the frontiers of science and technology from laptop to petaflop, building on its $100M investment in extreme scale computing and commitment to the DOE's FastForward program to pave the road to exascale.

DDN Sets Standard for High Performance Computing

After a competitive review of scale out storage alternatives, ORNL selected the DDN SFA12K-40 as the high-throughput building block for its Lustre® parallel file system. Once installed, the platform will deliver performance in excess of 10x what is achievable with contemporary scale-out NAS systems. Building on a decade of ORNL and DDN optimizations for the Lustre file system, the DDN system will be configured with Lustre performance of over one terabyte per second to meet the demands of Titan's 299,008 CPU cores. The ORNL Spider II configuration from DDN includes: 36 DDN SFA12K-40 systems, each with 1.12PB of raw storage capacity; Over 40PB of raw capacity in only 36 data center racks; A combined 20,000 disk drives in a single system. The combination of DDN's and ORNL's expertise in scaling Lustre in production environments will enable Titan to perform approximately six times faster with three times the capacity of its predecessor, Spider. Architecturally unique in many ways, Titan's power, scalability and efficiency serve as a showcase for the requirements of tomorrow as high performance computing (HPC) technologies continue to be adopted across the enterprise for Big Data computing. Both DDN and ORNL will be presenting at the Lustre User Group (LUG) in San Diego, April 16-18. For more on DDN events or to request a consultation at LUG, please visit here.

Supporting Quote

Jean-Luc Chatelain, chief technology officer at DDN:
"The world's toughest questions demand the toughest storage and the fastest technology to drive new levels of scientific insight. DDN has spent the better part of a decade engineering a platform that is built precisely and efficiently for today's Big Data challenges. As applications everywhere – from energy exploration to climate modeling to energy efficient car manufacturing – continue to drive extreme levels of computational simulation and data analytics, we're proud to provide the data storage technology that makes such innovation and economic competitiveness possible. We're honored to continue our long-standing partnership with ORNL today and to be part of the future of Big Data and exascale computing tomorrow."

Buddy Bland, project director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory:
"When building the world's fastest system for data intensive computing, we carefully considered all aspects of high-throughput I/O infrastructure and how efficient storage platforms can complement our supercomputer's efficiency. The ORNL and DDN teams have worked together to architect a file system designed to enhance the performance of our Titan supercomputer and enable our users to achieve unprecedented simulations and big data insights through massively scalable computing."

Source

By: Unknown On 9:43 PM

'World's fastest' home internet service hits Japan with Sony's help, 2 Gbps down

4/16/2013 8:01AM by Alexis Santos

(Click for Image)

Google Fiber might be making waves with its 1Gbps speeds, but it's no match for what's being hailed as the world's fastest commercially-provided home internet service: Nuro. Launched in Japan yesterday by Sony-supported ISP So-net, the fiber connection pulls down data at 2 Gbps, and sends it up at 1 Gbps. An optical network unit (ONU) given to Nuro customers comes outfitted with three Gigabit ethernet ports and supports 450 Mbps over 802.11 a/b/g/n. When hitched to a two-year contract, web surfers will be set back 4,980 yen ($51) per month and pony up a required 52,500 yen (roughly $540) installation fee, which is currently being waived for folks who apply online. Those lucky enough to call the Land of the Rising Sun home can register their house, apartment or small business to receive the blazing hookup, so long as they're located within Chiba, Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Tokyo, Kanagawa or Saitama. Click the bordering source link for more details on signing up.

View the full version of Engadget

Source

By: Unknown On 9:33 PM

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Freescale fashions world's smallest ARM-powered microcontroller

If you're looking for an exceedingly tiny ARM-based microcontroller, Freescale says it's just cooked up the world's smallest. Dubbed the Kinetis KL02, the piece of kit is 25 precent smaller than the previous record-holder and measures up at a 1.9 x 2.00 x 0.56 millimeters. Having trouble visualizing exactly how small that is? Just take a gander at the photo above. A 48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ processor has made it onto the wafer-level chip-scale package and it's paired with 32KB of flash memory and 4KB of RAM. The outfit reckons it'll be a good match for 'internet of things' devices that are tight on space, and says it beats its older L Series kin in power efficiency. Manufacturer sampling for the KL02 is slated for March, while wide availability is penciled in for July, and it'll set buyers back 75 cents a piece when purchased in 100,000-unit loads. Hit the jump for more details in the press release.

Show full PR text

Freescale introduces Kinetis KL02, world's smallest ARM Powered® microcontroller
1.9 x 2.0 mm MCU enables new wave of product miniaturization for the Internet of Things

NUREMBERG, Germany (Embedded World) – Feb. 26, 2013 – As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands to include greater numbers of small, intelligent, battery-operated devices, the MCUs that enable these devices must deliver performance, energy efficiency and connectivity in progressively smaller footprints. Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) is addressing the miniaturization trend with its new Kinetis KL02 MCU–the world's smallest ARM Powered® MCU. The KL02 holds great potential for ultra-small-form-factor products in applications such as portable consumer devices, remote sensing nodes, wearable devices and ingestible healthcare sensing.

Measuring just 1.9 x 2.0 mm, the Kinetis KL02 MCU is 25 percent smaller than the industry's next-smallest ARM® MCU. Within this miniscule device, Freescale has included the latest 32-bit ARM Cortex™-M0+ processor, cutting-edge low-power functionality and a range of analog and communication peripherals. This enables system designers to dramatically reduce the size of their boards and products while retaining the all-important performance, feature integration and power consumption characteristics of their end devices. In addition, space-constrained applications that previously couldn't incorporate an MCU now can be upgraded to become smart applications, adding a new tier of devices to the IoT ecosystem.

"Freescale has been a pioneer in many aspects of the ARM Powered MCU market with our Kinetis portfolio," said Geoff Lees, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Microcontroller business. "We were the first to market with MCUs based on the ARM Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M0+ processors, we set new standards for entry-level MCU energy efficiency, and we've now created the world's smallest ARM Powered MCU, helping advance the Internet of Things era."

"The Internet of Things will soon be a vast and diverse ecosystem of smart connected devices and screens that embed intelligence into many new areas of our lives. This could range from tiny sensors helping to monitor crops and deliver irrigation, to microcontrollers that enable entire buildings to be more energy efficient. Our mobile devices could be soon controlling and managing this data and making our lives easier to manage," said Richard York, director, Embedded Processor Products, ARM. "The Kinetis KL02 CSP MCU brings the best ARM and Freescale technologies to applications at the very edge of the IoT and opens up exciting possibilities for a new tier of ultra-small, smart, power-efficient devices."

Advanced chip-scale packaging
The Kinetis KL02 is a wafer-level chip-scale package (CSP) MCU. Freescale's CSP MCUs use the latest in package manufacturing technology to connect the die directly to the solder ball interconnects and, in turn, to the printed circuit board (PCB). This removes the need for bond wires or interposer connections, which minimizes die- to-PCB inductance and improves thermal conduction and package durability for physically harsh environments. The KL02 device is the third CSP MCU in the Kinetis portfolio, joining the larger 120/143-pin Kinetis K series K60/K61 variants. Additional Kinetis CSP MCUs with increased performance, memory and feature options are planned throughout 2013.

Energy efficiency and feature integration
Building upon the energy efficiency of the Cortex-M0+ core, the Kinetis KL02 MCU reduces the power consumption threshold of the Kinetis L series to an even lower entry point and is ideal for the demanding power profiles of miniaturized, IoT-linked systems. The ultra efficient KL02 delivers 15.9 CM/mA* and, like the other Kinetis MCUs, it includes autonomous, power-smart peripherals (in this case, an ADC, UART and timer), 10 flexible power modes and wide clock and power gating to minimize power loss. A low-power boot mode reduces power spikes during the boot sequence or deep sleep wake-up. This is useful for systems in which battery chemistry limits the allowable peak current, such as those employing lithium-ion batteries frequently used in portable devices.

Kinetis KL02 MCU features include:
48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ core, 1.71-3.6V operation
Bit manipulation engine for faster, more code-efficient bit-oriented math
32 KB flash memory, 4 KB RAM
High-speed 12-bit analog-to-digital converter
High-speed analog comparator
Low-power UART, SPI, 2x IICI2C
Powerful timers for a broad range of applications including motor control
-40 °C to +85 °C operation

Demo at Embedded World
Freescale will demonstrate the energy efficiency of the L-series microcontrollers and have samples of the Kinetis KL02 CSP at Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, Feb. 26-28, 2013 in Hall 4A, Booth 206.

Availability and enablement
The Kinetis KL02 CSP MCU is expected to begin sampling to lead customers in March 2013. Broad market availability of production-qualified samples is planned for July 2013 from Freescale and its distribution partners. Suggested resale pricing is 75 cents (USD) in 100,000-unit quantities.

The new FRDM-KL02 Freescale Freedom development platform and accompanying Freescale and third-party enablement support will also be available in July. Customers can start development with the FRDM-KL05Z Freescale Freedom development platform in late March. This contains the superset Kinetis KL05 MCU and provides access to the core, key peripherals and Freescale and third-party enablement.

To learn more, visit freescale.com/Kinetis/KL02CSP.

Source: Freescale

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

LG unveils world's smallest wireless charger, preps it for global availability

LG may have an obsession with hulking smartphones, but it's taken a different tact with its latest wireless charger, which is being hailed as the world's smallest. Christened the WCP-300, the pad juices up Qi-compatible devices such as the Nexus 4 (if you're not in the mood for a sliced sphere, of course) and the outfit's Optimus G Pro, Vu II and LTE II. South Korea will see the hardware arrive this week with a 65,000 won (roughly $60) price tag, but the charger is slated to roll out across the globe gradually, and the US is somewhere on its itinerary.

Source: LG Newsroom (translated)

Saturday, February 9, 2013

EA posts finished Origin for Mac, widens gamers' worlds

EA moves faster than we thought. Origin for Mac was in alpha just two weeks ago, and yet it's already launching to the public. The completed gaming portal gives Mac users their software library, socialization and the online store in an interface that will be mostly familiar to Windows players. While the selection of Mac-native titles is currently narrow -- we hope you really like Batman and Dragon Age 2 -- there's also a Steam Play-like level of cross-platform support, where a game bought for the Mac or Windows will be free to download for the other OS. Origin is currently too small to directly challenge the Mac App Store or Steam, but it's a step forward for computer gamers wanting platform parity -- and when it's free to download, it won't hurt to have a look.

Via: MacNews

Source: Origin

More Coverage: Joystiq

Friday, December 28, 2012

Transect China in Half the Time Aboard the World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line

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Transect China in Half the Time Aboard the World's Longest High-Speed Rail Line High speed rail may be a quixotic public works project here in California but for China, it's a cornerstone of the country's transportation infrastructure. Yesterday, Chinese officials expanded that infrastructure by inaugurating the longest such rail line on Earth and announced plans for seven more.

While not nearly as fast as the Tokyo-Nagoya mag-lev line Japan is working on, the high speed line running from, Beijing, the capital city of the People's Republic of China to Guangzhou, a provincial capital 1,428 miles (2,298 kilometers) to the South, is nearly five times as long. What's more, the line's trains reach speeds of 186 MPH (300 KPH) which shaves an astounding 12 hours off the trip. What was once a 20 hour-plus trek, now takes only eight. More than 150 pairs of trains will serve the line every day—darting from one capital city to the other with stops at other provincial capitals—Shijiazhuang, Wuhan and Changsha—along the way.

This is just one of eight new HSR lines China hopes to construct by 2020—four North-South and four East-West—to help ferry goods and people across the country's vast territories without having to rely on airlines or freeways. Instead, the Ministry of Railways (MOR) has upgraded conventional lines to accommodate high speed trains, built designated passenger lines, and even dabbled in mag-lev technology. In all, China operates the longest HSR network in the world, maintaining more than 5,800 miles (9,300 km) of rail. The MOR is working to more than double that figure to 11,184 miles (18,000 km) by 2015, according to the Xinhua News Agency, as part of the country's modernization efforts.

[/. - Washington Post - Inhabitat - Wikipedia - Image: The AP]

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By: Dilusha On 11:05 AM

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

In Depth: Jubilee Time Capsule: Inside the world's largest online history project

This year saw Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II celebrate her Diamond Jubilee and 60 years as head of the Commonwealth.

To mark both The Queen's Jubilee and to tell the story of the last 60 years, the Royal Commonwealth Society created the Jubilee Time Capsule.

The Jubilee Time Capsule is an online social archive, containing stories from people across all 54 Commonwealth countries, either as a written memory, a film, an audio recording or a photographic memory.

The time capsule marks the eventful six decades The Queen has seen, from Accession Day on 6th February 1952 to 2011's Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

These memories recount moments of Royal and historical significance, as well as personal histories, including weddings, family migration stories and individual tales of conflict and loss.

When The Queen became Head of the Commonwealth in 1952, there were eight member states - there are now 54. During Her Majesty's reign, 42 Commonwealth members gained independence from Britain and all chose to join the Commonwealth.

All Commonwealth residents, both adults and children, were invited to contribute a story about their family, community, country or the Commonwealth itself, from any time during Her Majesty's reign.

Over 37,000 people submitted contributions, via jubileetimecapsule.org and an Apple app.

Celebrities and members of the Royal Family to have taken part in the project include Prince Harry, Princess Eugenie, Paralympic and Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and William Hague.

The most popular day for people to remember was 29th April 2011 – the Royal Wedding – with more than 200 entries.

A massive 80,000 stories were submitted into the Jubilee Time Capsule in total, creating crowd-sourced People's History - an authentic legacy of the last 60 years.

The mass of entries was whittled down to the 60 'best' memories by a panel of distinguished judges, including the director general of The Royal Photographic Society, the Royal Librarian and Telegraph Deputy Editor Benedict Brogan.

These selected entries have formed the Diamond (re)Collection, and were presented to The Queen by the Royal Commonwealth Society during Her Majesty's tour of the Society's headquarters, on 14th November.

Jubilee

The entire Diamond (re)Collection was made public on the internet, immediately following this.

The 60 photographs, drawings, poems, essays and videos were given to The Queen on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet PC – the digital time capsule.

The tablet PC was presented to The Queen by 12-year-old John Samson, from Malawi, whose contributing essay, 'The day I wore my best clothes', was about the day he received his first school uniform.

John won the Royal Commonwealth Essay Junior Prize, which ran alongside the Jubilee Time Capsule project.

Jubilee Time Capsule: 60 years of the Commonwealth on a tablet PC 12-year-old John Samson, from Malawi, and winner of the Royal Commonwealth Essay Junior Prize, presents The Queen with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet PC, containing the Diamond (re)Collection. ©Capsool / Joe Gardner

The tablet PC will be stored at Windsor Castle as part of the Royal Collection, which is held in trust by the Sovereign for her successors and the nation.

The Royal Collection already includes technology, including PCs and DVDs, as well as art, furniture and other memorabilia, but this is the first artifact on a PC tablet to be added.

Danny Sriskandarajah, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society said: "The Commonwealth has been at the heart of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee celebrations and we wanted to do something innovative to celebrate the association and the 2.1 billion people that live in it.

"The Jubilee Time Capsule is an amazing collection of stories and memories that shows the shared history and aspirations of the Commonwealth's citizens."

The first date in the Jubilee Time Capsule timeline is 6th February 1952 – A National Parks employee in Kenya shares a photo and remembers the day Princess Elizabeth found out about her father's death and her imminent accession to the throne.

Some of the other best entries are of 7th June 1954 – The legacy of Alan Turing as remembered by his former PhD student, and 14th November 1990 – a personal account by Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, who recalls his childhood realisation that disability is not synonymous with disadvantage.

Many of the children's entries are very special and poignant; including one about 15th November 2011 – The day Woody Street's dad was awarded his Green Badge black cab license for passing 'The Knowledge'.

Although only 60 of the 80,000 stories submitted made it onto The Queen's tablet and into The Royal Collection, the others are by no means wasted.

On the contrary, the complete library of 80,000 entries will remain available online in perpetuity, forming part of the world's biggest online history project and occupying around 150GB of digital space.

The online capsule is unique in its ease of accessibility for such a large social archive, which will be of great value to teachers, academics and historians, as well as the general public, as it provides such a unique look at the last 60 years.

Jubilee Time Capsule: 60 years of the Commonwealth on a tablet PC All of the 80,000 entries submitted into what's become the world's largest online history project will be kept avaliable indefinately at www.jubileetimecapsule.org

All of the 60 entries that made it into the Diamond (re)Collection are both interesting and arresting and easily accessed as a collection at the Jubilee Time Capsule website, under the 'Collections' tab in the top right.

There is also a People's Choice Collection and the option to view entries by decade, region, Science, Culture & Education, Politics & Environment, Life & Royalty, or to simply browse through the capsule in its entirety.

There's also a search function, should you be looking for a particular subject or event.

If you have an iPhone or iPad you can also download the free Jubilee Time Capsule app, which has a great easy-to-use interface.

Jubilee Time Capsule: 60 years of the Commonwealth on a tablet PC Apple's app for iPhone and iPad has a intuitive interface and makes browsing the events of the past 60 years lots of fun

The online platform for the Jubilee Time Capsule is provided by Capsool, a company that creates (re)collections - social archives that collect people's stories and memories.

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By: Dilusha On 10:16 PM

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Nvidia Tesla K20 GPU family powering the world's fastest computer

K20X GPU powering the Titan

Behind every world's fastest supercomputer is a high-performance visual processor, and in the case of the new Titan comp, that GPU is the Nvidia Tesla K20X.

Nvidia's newly unveiled graphics accelerator is part of the company's K20 line, which not only boasts the highest performance, but also manages to be the most energy efficient.

With Titan packing 18,688 Tesla K20X GPU accelerators, the newly crowned supercomputer has a performance record of 17.59 petaflops, or 17.59 quadrillion calculations per second.

"We are taking advantage of Nvidia GPU architectures to significantly accelerate simulations," said Thomas Schulthess, professor of computational physics at ETH Zurich and director of the Swiss National Supercomputing Center in a press release.

According to the professor, such simulations will benefit fields of climate and meteorology, seismology, astrophysics, fluid mechanics, materials science and molecular biophysics.

The K20X, the flagship of Nvidia's Tesla line, surpasses all other processors with 3.95 teraflops single-precision and 1.31 teraflops double-precision peak floating point performance.

Nvidia also unveiled the Tesla K20 accelerator, which delivers a strong performance of 3.52 teraflops of single-precision and 1.17 teraflops of double-precision at peak.

Both the K20X and K20 are based on Nvidia's Kepler compute architecture and have enabled more than 30 petaflops of performance delivered in the last 30 days.

According to Nvidia, this is equivalent to the computational performance of last year's 10 fastest supercomputers combined.

The Titan supercomputer, with the help of the Nvidia K20X, took the top spot on Top 500's biannual list of the world's top supercomputers this week.

However, with the way tech specs advance, the Titan can be quickly knocked out of contention in six months.

It replaces the new No. 2, the IBM Sequoia, which itself replaced the new No. 3, the Fujitsu's K computer.

In addition to appearing at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the Titan supercomputer is located, K20 GPUs are going out to labs and universities worldwide.

Early customers in the U.S. include Clemson University, Indiana University, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Southern California.

International locations King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Shanghai Jiao Tong University are also destined to be part of the exclusive K20 GPU club.