The Fastest Supercomputer; Call of Duty 5; More ESA Woes

IBM has revealed a new world-record-breaking supercomputer, which is twice as speedy as the machine it has overtaken. Codenamed Roadrunner, it runs as petaflop speeds, one thousand trillion calculations per second, reports the BBC. The previous most powerful computer in the world, BlueGene/L, currently runs at 478.2 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) and uses 212,992 processors. However, Roadrunner will need only 20,000 chips to achieve previously unheard of petaflop speed, as the design will use both conventional Opteron processors made by AMD and the PlayStation 3’s Cell processor. Almost 13,000 of the PS3’s Cell processors are used in Roadrunner, and each of the 8-core chips runs at speeds of 4GHz. It was designed over several years by engineers from Sony, IBM, and Toshiba. The Cell chips are used as accelerators for portions of calculations, reports the New York Times. Roadrunner will be used at America’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to monitor the country’s nuclear stockpile. The massive machine will be housed in 288 fridge-sized cases, and will be linked together with 57 miles of fibre-optic cable. It consumes around three megawatts of power, roughly the same amount needed to run a large shopping centre. Speaking to The New York Times, Horst Simon, associate laboratory director for computer science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, commented, “Roadrunner tells us about what will happen in the next decade. Technology is coming from the consumer electronics market and the innovation is happening first in terms of cell phones and embedded electronics.” According to Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, if all 6 billion people on Earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what Roadrunner can in one day.

It’s had its Finest Hour, there’s been a Big Red One, and most recently, the series has waged Modern Warfare. Now, the latest Call of Duty game will see the World at War, reports the UK’s Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine. Confirming rumors, the game formerly known as Call of Duty 5 will indeed return to World War II, setting of all pre-Call of Duty 4 games. Developed by Treyarch, not series creator Infinity Ward, the game will portray US Marines fighting the Imperial Japanese in the Pacific. There will also be a “major chapter” in the game focusing on the invasion of Germany by the Soviet Union’s Red Army. Treyarch president Mark Lamir told the magazine, “The direction for the team was to make the best game they could, and as they were doing this they created a grittiness that quite frankly made some people very uncomfortable…This is a scarier Call of Duty than we’ve ever seen.” When asked about the decision to include graphic violence in the game, creative lead Rich Farrelly said, “It’s not just gore and violence for its own sake, but reflects what veterans have told us and the actual history.” One of the levels described in the magazine, called “Maken Raid,” features the torture of an Allied prisoner of war, who then has his throat slit by katana. The brutal scene is watched by the player’s character, who is rescued by US Marines much like the real-life Raid at Cabanatuan in 1945. Based on the Call of Duty 4 engine, Call of Duty: World at War will include more destructible environments than prior games in the series. It will also allow players to swim underwater, as well as use Japanese machine guns and flamethrowers with “propagating fire” burning jungle scenery, and enemies, in realistic fashion. As for multiplayer, the 360 version will sport a four-player co-op mode which can be played with four consoles over Xbox Live, or two consoles each using split-screen. The co-op campaign will be very similar to the single-player campaign, with gamers constantly accumulating points which can be used to unlock perks. Its multiplayer mode will feature vehicles and squad-based elements. As revealed by Activision last month, Call of Duty: World at War is in development for the 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, and PlayStation 2. The game will ship during Activision’s current fiscal year, with almost all prior Call of Duty games being released in the holiday quarter. Treyarch is also currently developing the new James Bond game, Quantum of Solace, using the Call of Duty 4 engine.

The Entertainment Software Association has hit a rocky patch of late. Beginning with soon-to-be merged megapublishers Activision and Vivendi leaving the representative body in May, the ESA has seen two more high-profile departures, LucasArts and id Software. A variety of reasons have been cited for the string of departures, including a substantial spike in membership dues to reclaim lost revenue from the downsizing of the ESA-run Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2006. There have also been claims of questionable leadership from the industry body’s president, Michael Gallagher, who replaced longtime president Doug Lowenstein in 2007. It now appears as if the unrest has not yet stabilized within the ESA. Speaking with the Washington Post, Entertainment Consumer Association president Hal Halpin said he believes two more companies will soon be parting ways with the ESA, and there are “several others that are unhappy but remain with the organization.” Continuing, Halpin noted that the string of departures is disturbing, and “anyone who cares about the games business should be concerned about what’s going on with the ESA.” When asked for a response, ESA spokesperson Dan Hewitt declined comment, dismissing Halpin’s statement as “speculation.” Halpin has been president of the ECA since the industry body formed in 2006. Whereas the ESA caters more specifically toward the interests of game publishers, the ECA’s express purpose is to give consumers a voice in the gaming industry. The two game-industry lobbying groups have found themselves on opposite sides of an issue in the past, most notably in 2007 when the ECA said it would push for a revision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an issue the ESA strongly opposed. Halpin’s statement comes after a belligerent verbal exchange last week in which the ESA lashed out at ECA-owned game-news site Game Politics for a story critical of this year’s E3 Media & Business Summit keynote speaker, Texas Governor Rick Perry. Addressing the story, which quoted a Dallas Morning News report where Perry said he believes in “the inerrancy of the Bible and that those who don’t accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell,” Hewitt charged Game Politics with exhibiting clear bias. “If the ESA posted a blog and called it a news site, journalists would rightfully balk and it wouldn’t pass a smell test,” said Hewitt to gaming blog Joystiq. “Remarkably, GamePolitics doesn’t face the same scrutiny even though it’s funded by the ECA and tainted with anti-ESA vitriol. At the end of the day, calling GamePolitics a news site is as laughable as saying there’s a Cuban free press.” Not amused, the ECA retorted, saying in part that, “Comparing a non-profit consumer advocacy organization to communist Cuba is unprofessional to say the least…especially given the broad support that the ECA and our consumer members have shown for the ESA.”

Seems to me like theres a slight bit of animosity between these two…

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