New Petaflop Super Computer From IBM
The world’s fastest super computer is currently Blue Gene/L (pictured left) which is located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It is capable of performing 478.2 trillion operations, or 478.2 teraflops, a second. However, IBM (which built Blue Gene/L) has announced plans to build a petaflop (quadrillion operations per second) computer, which essentially will be twice as powerful as Blue Gene/L.
[The] computer nicknamed “Roadrunner” that will combine Cell processors, a family of chips found inside the PlayStation 3, and processors from Advanced Micro Devices.
Roadrunner, which will be delivered to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in summer 2008, will be capable of performing more than a quadrillion operations, or a petaflop, when it’s fully operational. IBM helped design and build the Cell chip and has been looking for ways to expand its commercial potential.
(Image credit: Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
