IBM record breaking
supercomputer
makes history…
IBM's history-making hybrid supercomputer, built for the astronomy, human genome science and climate change.
National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Los For our clients, petaflop performance levels will allow
Alamos National Laboratory, has burned its way into the them to cross new thresholds in solving some of the most
TOP500 Supercomputer record book as the most challenging problems in science and engineering.
powerful system in the world by a wide margin. Designed Problems such as designing more effective
for the U.S. Department of Energy this supercomputer is drugs anticipating the effects of climate change,
the first to achieve performance at the petaflop level. In simulating the mysterious bodily process of protein folding
the world of industry firsts every IBMer can be proud of that could shed light on disease formation, and under-
this supercomputing milestone. This supercomputer standing the evolution of the universe. On the commercial
is six times faster than our competition's systems and side, this kind of massive computing power can help
twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at engineers virtually prototype entire cars and
Lawrence Livermore National Lab that planes without building costly models, allow
previously held the title. How fast is traders to instantly predict the ripple effect of
it? One petaflop equals one thousand a stock-price change, and analyze
trillion flops or one quadrillion complex underground geographies for oil
calculations per second. The fastest and gas production.
computer in the world 10 years ago was
capable of one teraflop (one IBM engineers anticipate that the
trillion calculations per second). Since hybrid design, made up of both AMD-
that time, supercomputing power has based processors and Cell Broadband
increased by 1,000 times. In fact, a Engine-based processors will likely
complex physics calculation that will take become the most energy efficient
the world's fastest supercomputer one week to supercomputer in the world, and consequently
complete would take the 1998 machine 20 years among the top systems on the Green 500 list. IBM
to finish, which means it would only be 50 percent already dominates the Green 500 list of the
complete today. world's most energy efficient super computers
however the world's fastest supercomputer
About 80 percent of this super computer's located at Los Alamos National
capacity will be devoted to national Laboratories takes that commitment to a
security in the United States and will whole new level.
also be used for research in
displayed their 'green' stat's and figures, and a Power and Energy workshop was held, hosted by Kester
Fernando, IMBPD, with expert advice from Penelope Hof, Learning Operations Specialist, on how to use your
laptop more efficiently. In addition, employees were asked throughout the day to save power wherever
possible - by unplugging laptops for a period of time, switching off lights and equipment when not in use etc.
The UK project was successful, however we can all do more and help put the green into 'Green'ock!
Footnote: You maybe interested to know that from 1990 to 2006, IBM's energy conservation actions worldwide con-
served 4.5 billion kWhrs of electricity; avoided approximately 3 million metric tons of CO2 emissions (equivalent to 44% of
the company's 1990 emissions); and saved $290 million.
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