IBM's New Supercomputer to Break 1 Petaflops Barrier

IBM will soon release the world's first cell broadband engine based supercomputer. Dubbed Roadrunner, the next-generation supercomputer will be located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The hi-tech device will have a performance level of 1 petaflops, the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. Besides the usual cluster of 16,000 AMD Opteron CPUs, the Roadrunner will integrate 16,000 Cell B.E. cores and both processing sets will be working together to deliver the ultimate information cruncher.

IBM explains that the Cell B.E. CPUs will act as the workhorse, completing the major floating point calculations, while the AMD Opterons will act as the system interface processors and as the transactional backbones between the nodes.

Once completed, the Roadrunner will become IBM's flagship supercomputer, easily outpowering the IBM BlueGene/L system located at the DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A quick comparison presents the current Blue Gene/L as being capable of only 280 teraflops, a little more than one-fourth of Roadrunner's total power.

Designers of the supercomputer are seriously taking space and power consumption issues into consideration. IBM specifically stated that the entire system will use advanced cooling and power management technologies to ensure that Roadrunner will be working as efficiently as possible. As related to necessary room, the Roadrunner will cover around 12,000 square feet of floor space when it is completed sometime next year. IBM plans to complete the construction of the Roadrunner around Q3 2007, but the supercomputer is supposed to be fully operational sometime in early 2008.

The U.S. DOE will be primarily used to handle "a broad spectrum of scientific and commercial applications." At a more specific level, the supercomputer could eventually be used to help the DOE ensure that the nuclear weapons stockpile in the US remains safe and reliable. Instead of conducting underground nuclear testing, Roadrunner could simulate how the nuclear weapons age.