Stan Beer
Friday, 12 May 2006 04:23
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IBM has embarked on a project with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York State to build one of the world's most powerful supercomputers in a $100 million project.
The computer, will be the most powerful university-based computer in
the world and the world's number four in performance, capable of 70
teraflops (70 trillion math calculations a second). The worlds most
powerful computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California, can perform at 367 teraflops, while the second and third
most powerful computers, which can run at 114 and 77 teraflops, are
also made by IBM and are at US sites.
Like the two fastest supercomputers in the world, the new Rensselar
computer will be based on IBM's eServer Blue Gene system. The similar
slightly more powerful system running at 114 teraflops at the IBM
Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, is made up of 20
refrigerator-sized racks, which is relatively small for a computer of
that power.
The Rensselar computer will be housed in a 20,000 square foot facility
and will be used in nanotechnology design of microsocopic
semiconductors. Other technology companies involved in the project
include chip maker AMD and semiconductor design tools manufacturer
Cadence.