Top500, the Supercomputer Site, as its tagline goes, has just released the names of the top 10 fastest computers of the world. This new list differs from the site’s June 2008 release owing to several changes in the evaluation process. The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The evaluation is done on the basis of the rate at which a computer can crunch numbers using floating point operations.

According to the list, the following are the top five supercomputers-

• At number 5  is China’s new gift to the world, Tianhe-1 (which etymologically means “River in Sky“ system. It has been installed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin, China. The system is mainly used to Tianhe-1 sports a hybrid design with Intel Xeon processors(6144) and AMD GPUs(5120) used as accelerators. With 563 teraflops, it can transact more than 500 trillion operations per second.
• The fourth slot has been occupied by Jugene at Julich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, with a computing power of 825.5 teraflops. It was no. 3 in the June list. It is an IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer and uses low- power chips. These 292000 chips makes it the fastest in England.
• Kraken, another upgraded Cray XT5 system at the National Institute for Computational Sciences/University of Tennessee, claimed the No. 3 position with a performance of 832 teraflop/s (trillions of calculations per second).It sports 100,000 dual-core Opteron processors made by AMD, used typically in servers and mainly work-stations.
• Roadrunner, the world’s first petaflop/s supercomputer app in the June list has got the second run in the list this time. It has recorded a computing speed of 1.04 petaflops. And thus can make 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second.
• The world’s fastest computer is Jaguar, installed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, United States. It ran at a monstrous speed of  1.75 petaflop/s.

The list states that “U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 277 of the 500 systems (down from 291). The European share (153 systems – up from 145) is still substantially larger than the Asian share (50 systems –up from 49). In Europe, UK remains the No. 1 with 45 systems (44 six months ago). Germany and France share the No. 2 spot with 2 systems 27 systems each. Dominant countries in Asia are China with 21 systems (unchanged), Japan with 16 systems (up from 15), and India with 3 systems (down from 6). “

Official List

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A year after the horrific Mumbai 26/11 attacks, the government, on tuesday, 1st december, has finally banned 20 million mobile handsets that do not have an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number in order to stop the usage of such phones by terrorists to make communications to high commands and launch attacks.

Wikipedia terms the International Mobile Equipment Identity number  as one unique to every GSM and WCDMA and iDEN mobile phone, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone. It can also be displayed on the screen of the phone by entering *#06# into the keypad.

Thus, whenever a phone is lost, or the SIM card is replaced, then via the IMEI number, it is possible to track or block such a phone.

Most of the Chinese phones that have flooded the market with cheap and economical phones with high-end features do not carry an IMEI number and hence it becomes difficult to track these phones. Reports from intelligence authorities state that these very phones have been used to communicate during the Mumbai attacks.

This drastic step has met with mixed response from the market.The customers who have already purchased such models without being aware of the IMEI scandal, are facing dead phones and visibly disturbed.

Apparently, new IMEI cards will be issued at Rs. 150-200 in a couple of days.

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Got to make an important call? Balance Nil? Don’t feel like stepping out to recharge your Vodafone prepaid sim?

Here’s what you need to do then.

Recharge online!

Log into Vodafone and click on Prepaid > Recharge online menu option. Just a requirement- either you need is a valid credit card or an online banking account to make payments for your recharge amount.

After logging into Vodafone, you need to select your recharge amount and fill in your details (name, Vodafone number, email id). Click ‘Enter’.

When asked to reconfirm your details, please go through them carefully. Post a payment option from the drop-down and click on ‘Submit’

Vodafone will redirected to the payment interface you chose, that is, either credit card gateway or internet banking.

Confirm the payment at the credit card/ bank payment gateway – Carefully enter your authentication details at the credit card/ bank payment gateway and confirm the payment amount. Your account will be debited for the recharge amount.

After the above step, you will shortly receive a recharge confirmation – that is an online transaction confirmation and a Transaction Reference Number as an acknowledgement of your payment. Just as one gets when some mobile shop owner recharges it via his mobile. you too, on successful payment, will recieve a recharge for your Vodafone number and and the usual SMS confirmation from Vodafone within 15 minutes.

Here’s the Maximum Recharge limit for the following states-

• Mumbai , Delhi, Kolkata, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana, Rajastan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh (E &W),   West Bengal, Maharashtra and Goa – Rs. 3500
• Chennai- Rs. 3350
• Rest of Tamil Nadu- Rs. 3360
• Kerala- Rs. 1001

Note: Minimum recharge for any state is Rs. 10.

Following modes of payment are accepted:

Credit Cards: Any valid Visa, Mastercard, Diners or American Express Credit Card.

Net Banking: Axis Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda (Retail), Bank of Baroda (Corporate), Centurion Bank of Punjab, Citibank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Indore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Travancore, Union Bank of India.

Plus, there is no additional fee charged for this service.

Simple, Ain’t it??

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©2010 Sapped. All Rights Reserved.

Twitter is fun and we all know that. But in case your GPRS freaks you out or perhaps you are unable to see the EDGE or GPRS icon at the top of your mobile desktop or for some reason, your mobile internet is not working properly, Airtel brings to you exclusive freedom to tweet.

Now you can continue tweeting even if your mobile net is not working.

How?

Simple

Via SMS!

All you have to do is sms “Signup” and send it to 53000. Complete the formalities and then start tweeting. That’s it. No need to open your mobile browser now and type www.twitter.com

If that is confusing you, clear your doubts at Airtel

Happy Tweeting!!

©2010 Sapped. All Rights Reserved.

Opera 10 Mobile Beta version for Windows Mobile is finally launched. After the resounding success of Opera 9 and its seriess, the Opera team decided to launch Opera 10 that looks quite similar to the symbian platform browser in order to integrate all its browsers with the same interface.

Among the newest features are speed dialing, tabbed browsing, password manager and a unique web browsing compression technology, Opera Turbo.

Following are excerpts from the Opera website-

• Opera Turbo: Opera’s servers compress Web pages up to 70%, greatly reducing the cost of browsing.
• Privacy: Be in control of your privacy. Manage your passwords, history, cookies, and cache.
• Rich Web content: Browse Web applications sites like Facebook and Gmail, and enjoy the rich interaction.
• Speed Dial: Get to your favorite Web page with just one click, with a set of visual bookmarks that appear when you open a new tab. To add a new page, simply click on an empty Speed Dial slot.
• Tabbed Browsing: Browse several Web sites at the same time. Check your email in one window, Facebook in another, and Twitter in a third, all while easily jumping from one tab to another.
• Auto-Rotation: On phones that support auto-rotation Opera Mobile 10 will automatically switch between portrait and landscape modes.
• Kinetic scrolling: On a touchscreen phone panning has become even easier with kinetic scrolling. When panning quickly around a zoomed-in page the panning momentum creates a more intuitive and easier to-navigate experience.

Download Opera 10

Here’s a review done by Pocket Now

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©2010 Sapped. All Rights Reserved.

Vodafone has launched a new plan to let its prepaid customers  avail the pay per second tariff for both local and STD calls. New  subscribers get an additional bonanza of free SIM card bundled with lifelong validity. The main purpose of launching this plan is to provide customers with excellent customer service and among the best GSM network in the state.

This is what the tariff for Mumbai says-

” Now make local and STD calls from Vodafone to Vodafone @ 1p/sec with the Rs 52 Recharge Card.

Validity 365 days

Note:

Calls from Vodafone to other mobile phones @ 1.2p/sec ”

The plan has been priced differently for different states. Currently the plan has been launched in the  following states with the mentioned prices-

Andhra Pradesh- Rs. 66

Chennai- Rs. 63

Gujarat- Rs. 58

Karnataka- Rs. 74

Kerala- Rs. 64

Maharashtra and Goa- Rs. 64

Mumbai- Rs. 52

Punjab-Rs.  66

Rajasthan- Rs. 69

Tamil Nadu (except Chennai)- Rs. 63

West Bengal- Rs. 63

The SMS, Roaming and ISD rates remains same as per the customers’ base tariff plan.

For Karnataka, Vodafone has included several options

“With the Rs 251 Recharge Card, now we can enjoy:

Talktime of Rs 225.50

Local & STD calls @ 1p/sec

Note:

No specified validity attached to talktime

Except Rs 28 SMS Pack @ 10p/SMS & Rs 49 SMS Pack @ 2p/SMS, no other Bonus Cards/Packs are applicable on this recharge. ”

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©2010 Sapped. All Rights Reserved.

Following the leads of telecom service providers Tata and Aircel, Bharti Airtel has also launched oen second billing plan. According to the new scheme, customers will be charged one paise for one second to any local and nation number in the same network and Rupee 1.20 paise for any external networks.

Airtel distribution network currently covers around 4.25 lakh cities and villages. Its network covers 110 million customers, has 100,000 sites and this new Freedom scheme will be available nationwide. President of mobile services, Atul Bhandari stated that the scheme has been dessigned “In keeping with our ethos of providing the best to our customers” and that the company is ” delighted to offer a one-second pulse to customers.”

Incidentally Aritel has also another scheme that coincidentally releases with Vodafone’s. Called Airtel Advantage, subscribers to this plan will have to pay  50 paise for every minute while calling local and national numbers in same network and 60 Paise for those with external networks.

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