All the best records are set by liquid-cooled systems. Nitrogen is most common but some of them use liquid helium. The CPU doesn't need to run at such a low temperature, it just gives them a steeper thermal gradient, which allows them to get more wattage (heat) out of the CPU so they can run at a higher wattage (electrical) at a given temperature. If clock speed were the criterion, then indeed that AMD record from last month is the winner. However most of the recent clock speed benchmarks have been set by Intel Netburst (Pentium 4 and Celeron) processors in the LGA-775 socket, which by now is pretty much obsolete. These processors were designed back in the early 2000's when high clock speed was the primary design goal. [1] Overclockers are typically more interested in overall instructions per second, and therefore instructions-per-clock and memory bandwidth, etc. are a factor. A popular program is SuperPi, which calculates the value of Pi to very high precision. The record-holders there are all of the latest (overclockable) Intel models (like the Core i7 Extreme 980X, 2600K, etc.) running at speeds around 6 to 7 GHz. [2] Based on the original question (referencing Mersenne prime testing as the operative benchmark) you should probably look at the GIMPS Prime95 benchmark results. Here again the records are held by the latest Intel processors like the Core i7-2600K, overclocked into the 4-5 GHz range. [3] Note however that the serious liquid-cooling folks do not use the GIMPS benchmark, so we don't really know how fast one of their systems would go. With the right motherboard a Core i7 2600K can be run at 4.5 GHz with just normal air cooling. See [4], conclusion states: "[...] Practically, though, you should be able to reach anywhere between ~4.5 and roughly 5 GHz on air cooling with all Core K-series processors based on the 32 nm Sandy Bridge architecture." - Robert [1] See http://www.hwbot.org/benchmark/cpu_frequency/ [2] See http://www.hwbot.org/benchmark/superpi_32m/ [3] See http://www.mersenne.org/report_benchmarks/ [4] See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-overclocking-efficiency,285... On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 18:45, Tom Rokicki <rokicki@gmail.com> wrote:
The answer is probably one of the AMD overclocked processors; they have a bunch of people that go crazy with cooling solutions and crank the clock up:
http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Breaks-Frequency-Record-with-Upcoming-FX-Pro...
Not that this is ready for your home office or anything like that.
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Simon Plouffe <simon.plouffe@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
As you may know, the fastest computer is currently a japanese machine called K, which can do 10 petaflops (?) or something like that. These machines are made with ordinary components at the base like Intel processors or Opteron + many GPU like Nvidia.
This is all very impressive but I am wondering, what is the fastest single operation computer on this planet ? A souped-up Intel machine running overclocked at 4 ghz ? Is there somebody that knows the answer to that question ?
In other words, if someone wants to run let's say the Mersenne test for a prime which is not yet implemented in parallel then on which machine would that algorithm run the fastest ?
Best regards and have a nice evening.
Simon Plouffe
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