Roadrunner--World's Fastest Supercomputer

I can't even wrap my brain around some of these numbers!! Introducing the latest fastest supercomputer in the world named 'Roadrunner' . . .

Engineers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Corp. unveiled yesterday the 'Roadrunner,' a $100-million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.

To put its speed in perspective (for us mere mortals), if every one of the six billion people on Earth used a hand-held computer and worked 24 hours a day, it would take 46 years to do what 'Roadrunner' can do in a single day.

Or, 'Roadrunner' has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 2.5 kilometres high.

This technology breakthrough which took six years of work was accomplished by the IBM and Los Alamos engineers on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.

'Roadrunner' is twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which itself is three times faster than any of the world's other supercomputers, according to IBM.

"The computer is a speed demon. It will allow us to solve tremendous problems," said Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons research and maintains the warhead stockpile.

Officials said 'Roadrunner' could also have a wide range of other applications in civilian engineering, medicine and science, from developing biofuels and designing more fuel-efficient cars to finding drug therapies and providing services to the financial industry.

Some elements of 'Roadrunner' can be traced back to popular video games, said David Turek, vice-president of IBM's supercomputing programs. In some ways, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3," he said. "We took the basic chip design [of a PlayStation] and advanced its capability," said Mr. Turek.

But 'Roadrunner,' named after the New Mexico state bird, is NOT like a video game. Try to picture this . . .

Roadrunner's interconnecting system occupies nearly 560 square metres with 92 kilometres of fibre optics and weighs almost 227,000 kilograms.

Although 'Roadrunner' is made from commercial parts, the supercomputer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory housed in 288 connected refrigerator-sized racks.

» Source: The Globe and Mail/Associated Press