At the heart of conVERGENce
About Us About Us Services News Tools

News - IBM Computer Breaks Petaflop Processing Barrier

Jun 09, 2008 IBM Computer Breaks Petaflop Processing Barrier
From: cnnmoney.com
By: Jessica Hodgson , Dow Jones Newswires

A supercomputer developed by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has become the first so-called petaflop computer, processing more than one thousand trillion calculations per second.

The machine has doubled speeds achieved by the previous fastest supercomputer, the IBM Blue Gene computer, hitting the milestone of petaflop calculations.

The computer, dubbed "Roadrunner", was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration and will initially be used to protect the U.S.'s arsenal of nuclear weapons.

IBM said Roadrunner is the first so-called "hybrid" supercomputer, assembled from components including chips used in videogames and standard x86 processors. Cait Crawford, one of the scientists behind the project, said the computer, which relied on sophisticated hardware to boost standard hardware components, was likely to usher in a new generation of supercomputers.

Crawford said that the computer could also likely have applications in financial services, climate change solutions and cloud computing initiatives.

Consulting
Development
Operations

NEWS
15.09.2015 Cisco router break-ins bypass cyber defenses
Security researchers say they have uncovered clandestine attacks across three continents on the routers that direct traffic around the Internet, potentially allowing suspected cyberspies to harvest vast amounts of data while going undetected.
03.02.2011 River of IPv4 addresses officially runs dry
In a ceremony in Miami this morning, the final five blocks of IPv4 addresses were given out to the five Regional Internet Registries that further distribute IP addresses to the far corners of the planet. The five RIRs still have tens of millions of addresses as working inventory, but once those addresses are given out, it's over.
27.05.2010 Are you ready for the big internet crunch?
The internet as we know it is reaching its limits.  Within 18 months it is estimated that the number of new devices able to connect to the world wide web will plummet as we run out of "IP addresses" -- the unique codes that provide access to the internet for everything from PCs to smart phones.  
Copyright 2018 © Vergen Inc.