IBM develops world's fastest supercomputer

IBM has developed a new supercomputer which is currently world's fastest. The new Blue Gene/L is capable of doing 36.01 teraflops. (one teraflop equals one trillion calculations per second)

The ex world's fastest supercomputer, the Earth Simulator from NEC, is able to do 35.86 teraflops.

IBM will commercialize its new supercomputer next year. The company said that this machine's running cost is lower than the Earth Simulator because it consumes far less energy.

Update: here's some more information coming from Reuters:

The world's largest computer company said its Blue Gene/L supercomputer is eight times faster, and consumes 28 times less power per computation than today's fastest supercomputers and surpassed NEC Corp.'s Earth Simulator Center as the world's most powerful supercomputer.

To be more cost effective, the Blue Gene/L system is about 100th the size of the Earth Simulator and consumers far less power, IBM said.

NEC's computer in 2002 was tapped as the world's fastest at nearly five times faster than the previous leader, a machine built by IBM, the scientists said then.

However, The company said its largest planned Blue Gene/L machine, which is being built by IBM for delivery to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in early 2005, will occupy 64 full racks, with a peak performance of 360 teraflops.