The world supercomputer crown is headed from Yokohama, Japan to Rochester, Minnesota. IBM has claimed a new record in computer speed after three years of NEC’s Earth Simulator being the champion. The BlueGene/L is IBM’s newest supercomputer which generated a speed of 36.01 Tflop/s to eclipse the previous record of 35.86. The “L” in the name BlueGene/L stands for Lite (not the Miller product, however). This is actually a smaller version of what’s to come from IBM. In fact, the BlueGene/L uses only 1% of the space required for the Earth Simulator or only 30 square meters. The name BlueGene comes from a tremendously powerful computer which was designed to model how proteins fold for biological research, but the original BlueGene was never built. BlueGene/L has quite a future in front of itself. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the nuclear security laboratory, has ordered a larger version of BlueGene/L whose speed will be in the range of 360 Tflop/s, a mere ten times the speed of our current champion. If you are considering ordering a BlueGene/L for your organization or for your personal use, get your checkbook out – pricing for the Lawrence Livermore model is at $100million and your electric bill will go up by $250,000 annually.
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