Sun Microsystems bags 44 million Defence Contract to build Virtual Supercomputer

Sun Microsystems have bagged a 44 million defence contract deal from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The project would run for five and half years and would focus on microchip interconnectivity via on-chip optical networks enabled by Silicon photonics and proximity communication. It is clear from Sun’s Sources that the project will build on existent research done under DARPA’s High Productivity Computing Systems program.

The main reason why the project was awarded to Sun was to accelerate the development of lower cost, high performance and high productivity systems. Sun says this project presents a unique opportunity to develop supercomputers through interconnecting an array of low-cost chips, with the potential to overcome the fundamental cost and performance limits of scaling up today’s large computer systems. This project is to help companies and organizations to utilize applications with high compute and communication requirements, such as energy exploration, biotechnology and weather modeling.