IEEE Spectrum

Mont-Blanc, a European public-private consortium, aims to make exaflop supercomputers based on the central-processing units (CPUs) used in smartphones and tablet computers. The Mont-Blanc project, which was launched at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in 2011, currently has 14 partners and is set to run through September 2016. The researchers recently unveiled a prototype blade server that could lead to a full exascale system in the future. The new system would consume between one-fifteenth and one-thirtieth as much energy per processor as conventional high-performance computing systems. The system relies on ARM cores, which are designed to run on small smartphone and tablet batteries, and could yield more speed while consuming less power. To read further, please visit http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/europe-wants-a-supercomputer-made-from-smartphones/.