IBM and tech school to build $100 million supercomputer

Stan Beer
Friday, 12 May 2006 05:23

Your IT - Home IT

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.