The name of the newest entry in supercomputers is "Roadrunner," which is able, for the first time in history, perform 1,000 trillion calculations a second (one petaflop). That's twice as fast as its nearest competitor. It was developed by engineers at IBM (NYSE:IBM) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
An amazing part of this story is the $100 million computer was based upon the basic chip design of a Playstation. Vice president of the supercomputing program at IBM, David Turk, said it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3." He added that they took the basic chip design of a Playstation 3 and enhanced its capability.
Some of the specs from a USAToday Report: "The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory."
The primary purpose for the computer is connected to America's nuclear program, and specifically for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. Part of its use will be for the simulation of potential nuclear explosions.
While nuclear related issues will be its main purpose, officials said it may also have uses in medicine, science and civilian engineering.
About three-quarters of the work of the computer will be classified and/or defense related.
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Another week is ending and the flurry of news continues. Here's what the Know More Media authors have been discussing over the last couple of weeks. Apple made big buzz with the unveiling of the iPhone 3G:3G iPhone: July 1th... [Read More]
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