Monday, November 14, 2005

New Computer Speed Record Triples the Stakes

The BlueGene/L System ranks number one on the latest world rankings, a list of the 500 fastest supercomputers known as the Top500. It has come top of the last two lists but remains a work in progress – it is made from modular units that can be easily added to its increase raw processing power. Since the last list in June 2005, BlueGene/L has more than doubled in size. It now has more than 130,000 individual processors.
The behemoth has now reached a peak speed of 280.6 teraflops (1 teraflop is one trillion calculations in 1 second). This is more than three times faster than its closest rival, another IBM-built machine called Watson Blue Gene. The latter is installed at the company's research centre in New York, US, and has been clocked at 91 teraflops.

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