Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteFireDragon
i'm questioning if this guy is really qualified to be a professor. my netbook can do this as long as i have enough external storage drives, you don't need a super computer. he doesn't even know the difference between processing power and storage space 
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I think you probably didn't calculate the storage space required for these photos. Suppose each photo occupies 1 MB, it takes 1.5 PB to store all these. Typically it takes a classroom to hold hard drives adding up to 1.5 PB today.
Secondary-storage space is another important performance index of a supercomputer, further to computation power. For example, to simulate ion diffusion in a single human heart, for 100 mm spacing we have 4.23x10^8 computational points. Storing 1 minute of simulation at 1 ms time steps requires 5.4 PB disk space.
I think it's pointless to mention your netbook here, as it's not relevant.