From floppy disks to teraflops

Released 08/05/2009

Matthew Jane finds out about super computers and tapping into knowledge sources

Who remembers the first computers to come into schools? Those weighty brown and grey boxes that needed to be wheeled around classrooms, with floppy disks that would whir with such ferocity that ear protectors should have been standard issue. It was the dawning of a brave new world for schools, and exciting if somewhat daunting prospect, but a platform from which nobody has looked back.

This morning, I sat with some of the most respected brains in the IT world at a roundtable meeting hosted by Dell. Amongst those present was Paul Calleja of the University of Cambridge, the home of a state of the art ‘super-computer'.

If you imagine computers on a Darwinian level, then those grey boxes schools used to dote on would be the early chimp-like mammals, whereas the kit at the University of Cambridge would be equivalent to the fittest of today's humans. Basically, these are powerful machines. Calleja said his machine cost £2m and provides 18 teraflops of performance (which is basically a lot!).

While it is still a fair way off until schools will be able to access, or would need, this sort of performance quality from computers, with the curriculum veering more towards a university style education, there is scope and potential to look to universities to share these resources with schools. Calleja explained that he is already in conversation with several organisations and small and medium enterprises share the Cambridge resources.

This would suggest that it is only a matter of time until the trickle down effect of this is felt by schools and colleges around the country. As budgets are squeezed, institutes such as further education settings will be looking to forge closer links with other educational institutions. Schools should be aware of the rich potential for a democratisation of resources and technological expertise and be ready to seek out closer ties with them.

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